| Les Nouveaux Riches is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of the Milan-based artist Matteo Negri in Vienna in the Aa Collections. "Meanwhile" explores the subject of time, and the time of the viewer in front of the artworks.
Since its beginnings, the artist has been analysing the perceptual role of the surface, colour, geometric aspects, chromatic variability, and reflection, which he employs as means of alienation for changing ordinary perceptions of volumes and planes. The media he employs span from sculpture and installation to geometric-abstract painting.
In the main gallery room, we have four large aluminium square format works, all conceived and produced for this show. In this series, Negri uses different materials and multiple layers applied on aluminium panels. The base of acrylic, shapes an intuitive and simple geometry of flat planes filled with gradients of colour. The artist fixes and saturates new levels on these surfaces with layers of coloured film. Up on it, the dichroic mirrored film shapes the definite geometry that leads the viewer to watch themselves on the artworks.
It isn't easy to classify whether these works are abstract paintings or sculptures. Negri plays with approaches, the approach of the viewer, the approach of the architecture, with new colours of iridescent films, and unique cuts. It has been told that Octobers in Vienna has a distinctive lighting mood, the artist wants to activate and let his work be activated from this light. A kind of expansion from the inside to the outside.
In a second room, the viewer is invited to attest to the genesis of this series. The distinct geometries are achieved by using the same language as the works in the main room, only this time in smaller formats. All these works Negri has created speak of similar matters. In the titles, the artist assigns an exact time and date for the viewers – „Meanwhile at 10:45 a.m. of the 29th March 2022" or „Meanwhile at 9.27 pm of the 15th April 2022", however, without establishing definitive statements, since the artworks and the viewers are in a state of constant conversation, an interplay of reflection and perceptions.
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