Matteo Fato's 'Somersault' at Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice

Matteo Fato (born 1979, Pescara) presents his solo exhibition 'Somersault' (Italian: 'capriola') at Galleria Michela Rizzo in Venice. The show stems from a 2015 residency in Norway, whose experience Fato has translated into a pictorial narrative that, like a somersault, leaps forward, flips, and lands back on the ground. However, the critic Arianna Testino notes that the enthusiasm of the pictorial acrobatics seems exhausted in the leap, leaving the gaze overly anchored to a dense, breath-taking color. The dialectic between container and content struggles to take flight: wooden slats, once packaging and now a hut, appear as a jumble rather than evoking a welcoming, albeit temporary, shelter. Only the powerful easel dominating the final room regains upward momentum toward the essential, echoed by the last painting on view, yet without adequately balancing the weight of high-density color and material.