Davide Maria Coltro. Astrazione Mediale

Davide Maria Coltro. Astrazione Mediale

Curated by Alessandro Castiglioni
with the critical contribution of Elena Pontiggia
28.04 - 01.09.2024

The exhibition presents Davide Maria Coltro's most recent production in which the medial language, characteristic of his most authentic style, takes on new abstract and synthetic connotations, capable of highlighting the relationships between the fundamental elements of electronic painting, such as bits and pixels, in a code that he himself defines as 'painting beyond matter'.
The project is in continuity with a broader area of analysis on abstract art, from the Concrete Art Movement to Analytical Painting, developed by the MA*GA Museum. In this area, Coltro interprets themes that characterise the present such as the complex dialogue between art and science, the new cognitive frontiers of Visual Studies and the redefinition of the relationship between art and spirituality. His media painting, thanks to his profound knowledge of the digital world, creates surprising expressive possibilities that also involve neuroaesthetics.
The exhibition consists of a series of new installations, specially designed and constructed for the museum spaces, in which the Media Paintings are characterised by a constantly changing abstract generative flow designed by the artist remotely.

The rooms of the museum will become a place of silent meditation in which the contemplation of the images in the making will bring the public closer to a meditative and private dimension. This aspect will then acquire further significance within the fabric of the city of Gallarate: Coltro's works will be broadcast on the city's digital communication totems, re-proposing the concept of the "Civic Picture" that the artist had already presented in Shanghai, China, in 2006.
The exhibition will also be enriched by an educational programme that will take the form of a permanent workshop in which Coltro will build opportunities for dialogue with the public of all ages around the relationship between technological physicality and digital immateriality within his work.

Davide Maria Coltro (Verona, 1967) is an artist and researcher. Among the national and international institutions that have hosted or acquired his works are: the Mart in Rovereto, the Galleria di Trento, the GAM Galleria d'arte Moderna Achille Forti in Verona, the GAM Verbania, the Museum of Modern Art in Moscow, the Centro Pecci in Prato, the MARCA Museum in Catanzaro, Museo della Permanente in Milan, SPSI Art Museum in Shanghai; ZKM in Karlsruhe; the Italian Cultural Institute in San Francisco, Stadtgalerie in Kiel, ETAGI in St. Petersburg, GASC Villa Clerici in Milan, Künstlerhaus in Graz, Collezione Paolo IV in Brescia, Fondazione Lercaro in Bologna. In 2011 he was present in the Italian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. In 2023 VAF Fondazione / Stiftung dedicated a monograph to the artist's complete oeuvre. Lives and works between Milan and the Maggiore Lake.