DAVIDE MATTERA (1984)

Milan, Italy

Studio: Barcelona, Spain

I was born in the contradictory Milan of the 1980s, amid glittering catwalks and untold shadows.

I grew up in the suburbs, far from the spotlight and close to the cracks.

Even as a child I drew everywhere, but I didn't like the blank sheet of paper: I preferred the pages of newspapers and books, where I could dialogue with something that already existed,

I draw on, remove, modify, disturb, rewrite.

Graffiti soon arrived, like an inevitable call.

In '98, with my lifelong friend Gabry, I pick up my first spray can.

A train, an escape from the railway police, the adrenalin rush.

I realize that I like to leave my mark.

Even more so knowing that it can travel, be seen, disappear.

I attend art schools, the Academy, but the real learning happens elsewhere: in social centers, amidst raves and peeling walls, inside an underground made of sounds, writings and long nights.

I observe, I experiment, I assimilate.

But I do not define myself.

I live in search.

In 2000, I encounter tattooing.

I am fascinated by the figure of the tattoo artist: a hybrid between artisan, outsider and modern shaman.

I start out self-taught and over time build a solid, internationally recognized path.

I travel, tattoo, publish books, attend conventions in Europe, Asia and America. Barcelona becomes my centre of gravity.

But in 2019, something cracks. Painting, never entirely abandoned, had become a forced extension of my tattooing style. I was painting to please, not to seek.

So I stop. Two years of creative silence, necessary to lose certainty and find meaning again.

I started again from silence, from memory, from the peeling surfaces of walls, from rusty trains, from dust and voids.

Painting is back - essential, rough, authentic.

I embrace the void, the essential gesture.

A living, unplanned language.

I am inspired by Japanese minimalism, where removing is an act of truth, and absence becomes substance.

Today I paint as I breathe. I do not seek definitions or affiliations.

I am free from pre-packaged styles, from roles, from labels.

My aesthetic sense is a personal guide, a form of resistance.

Each work is a fragment, a gesture, a memory: the raw manifestation of what has been and what escapes.

I do not want to explain.
I seek the silence between things. I seek the weight of the void.

A necessary act. A return to the essential.