RENA.I.SSANCE
Painting and Artificial Intelligence
di Andrea Ravo Mattoni
dal 1 febbraio presso Artrust a Melano
Starting on 1st February 2023, Artrust will host a new exhibition in Melano, in via Pedemonte di Sopra 1, dedicated to Andrea Ravo Mattoni, Italian-Swiss street artist known to the public for his large-scale spray replicas of classical and Renaissance art masterpieces.
“RenA.I.ssance. Painting and Artificial Intelligence”, this is the title of the exhibition curated by Artrust with the collaboration of Andrea Ceresa, inaugurates an unprecedented strand in Ravo’s production that – while maintaining the distinctive cornerstones of his style, namely spray painting and classicism – has led him to confront himself no longer with the great masters of the past, but with a new entity which generates art: Artificial Intelligence.
The works that will be displayed, whether portraits, still lifes or landscapes, will appear to the viewer as plausible in their Renaissance and classical essence, although with some unusual details. Actually, those images are entirely created by Artificial Intelligence. What Ravo does then, is what he did before: bringing them back to the canvas through the spray can. He used to copy Michelangelo and Caravaggio, now he copies the machine-artist».
VISIT THE EXHIBITION
February 1 – April 28, 2023
Open from Wednesday to Friday
From 10 to 18.
Extraordinary openings on Saturday 18 February, 18 March, 16 and 22 April.
Closed on public holidays
At Artrust, via Pedemonte di Sopra 1, 6818 Melano
FREE ENTRY
Andrea Ravo Mattoni
Andrea Mattoni was born in Varese in 1981 into a family of artists. His first experiences as a writer date back to 1995, under the stage name Ravo. He then enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, devoting himself to oil and acrylic painting on canvas. In 2003, he created and founded THE BAG ARTFACTORY space in Milan’s Bovisa district, a real magnet for writers and artists. He deepened his pictorial research and at the same time revived his spray work: in 2016 he started the project “recovery of classicism in the contemporary” with the spray reproduction of classical art paintings on large walls. In 2019, he took part in the ceremony for the 500th anniversary of Leonardo Da Vinci’s death in Amboise, in the presence of Presidents Macron and Mattarella. In 2021, he launches the ‘La Cattedrale‘ project in Somma Lombardo, a former abandoned factory transformed into a place of encounter and creativity.
Andrea Ceresa
Andrea Ceresa was born in Varese in 1995. After graduating from linguistic high school, he studied philosophy in Bologna and then visual arts at the IUAV in Venice, where he graduated in March 2022 with a thesis entitled ‘Artificial Intelligence and Human Stupidity’. In February 2022, he organised and curated 6 Pittori, an exhibition on the island of Giudecca in Venice with six international artists. In October, while attending the Type Design Expandend course at Bauer in Milan, he collaborates with Spectrum for E.P.A.R., a Hood14 exhibition supported by The North Face. He is curator of ‘La Cattedrale’ in Somma Lombardo.
Inelegans A.I.
The digital intelligence platform Inelegans (from the Latin, inelegant, without grace, without art) is a project by Andrea Ravo Mattoni, developed in collaboration with Nicola Moresi, CEO of the Ticino-based IT company Moresi.com. The platform, compared to other similar realities on the market, was created for the exclusive use of the artist. It is he himself, in fact, who supplies the platform with images of his own liking, which will then go on to compose that set of structured data (the dataset) that will be read, interpreted and processed – in the form of new images – by the algorithm. In this way, Ravo’s human and creative intelligence retains control over the purely executive intelligence of the machine, so that the results it generates are in line with its artistic vision, expressive style and cultural references.