Ambiguous Bodies is Mattia Cicoli’s examination of the figure under duress in a new series of expressionist paintings. Evocative of past masters, Phillip Guston and Pablo Picasso, Mattia’s abstracted figures are interwoven by muscles. They are described in different patches of colour surrounded by violent brush strokes. Vibrant colours interrupt and fragment the picture plane, unbalancing the viewer, but then recapturing them with moments of clarity and calm.

The notion of balance is important to Mattia as the physical forms of his paintings express the reality of a recent Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis. Disorientating and chaotic paintings represent a place of uncertainty and obstruction; we are invited to consider the crack in the floor that throws out his balance. Problematic limbs are a literal and figurative concern for this young painter. Rhythmically evocative, they are also beautifully fragile.

Red Gallery North Fitzroy, Melbourne
Group Exhibition December 2016
 

Mattia focussed on human figures through abstraction to raise the questions around the confusion behind deformities and disabilities, sexuality and relationships. Mattia leaves the paintings open to interpretation with a sense of disturbance.

Disturbance is shown through suffocating bold, bright and wash-like colours, contrast between solid and liquid forms. Rhythmic brush strokes constructing figurative bodily forms of gender, forming sometimes robotic figures on the canvas, help emphasise the confusion and questions behind everyday life.

Nervous Systems brings together artists, Mattia Cicoli and Peter Douglas, in an exhibition exploring personal journeys of the mind. Work by these Melbourne based artists’ pivots around the figure and its relationship with our world. Together the artists collaborate in the exhibition, Nervous Systems, and share the experience of painting.

Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Victorian College of the Arts