You might recognise some of the painted figures in Mattia Guarnera’s recent solo exhibition at BLEUR. They might feel familiar, like you’ve seen them before, reflecting some kind of digital memory you can’t quite put your finger on. Guarnera looks towards Black masculinity within digital fragments: YouTube replays, WorldStar moments, and algorithmic traces of street culture. Usually held suspended and fleeting before the inevitable swipe, he grounds them onto monumental canvases where we have no choice but to be present.
Being present and online may sound contradictory at first, but part of Guarnera’s practice is to succumb to what he refers to as algorithmic consciousness. Rather than being nostalgic for a world pre-doomscroll, he is pursuing a way to confront its reality. The title, A New Real, references Hal Foster’s book The Return of the Real. Foster noticed in the 90s that the art world was moving from theoretical discussions of reality (semiotics, symbology, hidden meanings) to displaying the actual visceral materiality of bodies, social sites, and emotion. Similarly, Guarnera tells me he doesn’t want to create escapism, but reflect the actuality of the cultural zeitgeist.
Adding his own twist, Guarnera confronts us with a new reflection of the real, one that is mediated through an online real. Whereby, symbology and bodies have become merged—the body becomes a sign, the sign becomes the body. Genuine reflections of reality are posted online (on reels) that create genuine emotional reactions, but coded into aesthetics, motifs, viral formats, and algorithmic scoring. It’s simultaneously a visceral experience and a sign system.
In this interview, Guarnera and I discuss his recent exhibition, the evolution of his practice, and what he’s working on next.
How did you find the opening?
Super good. It felt like the first landmark of seeing the community that I’ve been building materialised beyond the ethereal of social media. I’ve always aspired to be an artist that other artists want to be around. I feel like the show represented that, there were a lot of cool people I f— with. It’s really important because they affirm something for you, sometimes you lose it, and they help you find it again.
You mentioned this exhibition signals a change in direction for you, what is that change?
Primarily, the change was in the material that inspired me. It’s predominantly Black male figures, who I saw as analogies or figures through which we impose our own expression. In the past, I struggled with portraying Blackness in my work because it often felt imposed onto me as an artist. This show was me taking ownership of that through my own exploration. I always think of a show as a thesis, you start out with a loose idea and throughout the making of it you go on a discovery and find some sort of conclusion.
I love the idea of your show being a thesis. You start with a question, and you build a world around that question, but when you get to the end, you often find yourself with more questions.
Exactly, it’s a back and forth, isn’t it? The images in the show are very much inspired by the digital realm and our shared lived experience. The Black male body being a canvas through which we impose ourselves onto—whether it’s famous figures or athletes—they’re motifs that we romanticise and find ourselves within. I hope people connected with those figures and had their own personal anecdotes related to them.
What is the context behind—A New Real—the title of your show?
The title itself was taken from Hal Foster’s book The Return of the Real, with my own twist. I try to follow synchronicities in my practice; it’s a mixture of conscious decisions and what I describe as algorithmic consciousness. That tension is important for me. When I’m painting, I feel like I re-materialise these images, which are digital and non-grounded. There’s a push and pull between the digital and physical, the real and artificial.
Do you feel like the growing circulation of images online has affected your practice?
Images are constantly being churned out, and we’re inundated by them, but there’s still something quite ritualistic about them, and I try to ground that through painting. I sometimes find myself getting lost in the scroll, but also a lot of my practice is about succumbing to that digital realm. Before I paint, I primarily make all my work on an iPad. I used to struggle with this idea of the quintessential artist in a candle-lit room with loads of sketches, and that just didn’t feel true to me. I had this epiphany where I’m always on my phone, so why not do something that’s more true to my experience? Rather than romanticise the past or create utopic worlds, I want to address the more difficult confrontational reality that we actually live in.
Something I think you do really well is you hold tense and fleeting moments still. You dwell, and you’re very present in those fast-paced moments. I feel like that connects a lot of your work?
The work in this show definitely does that. I’ve always been interested in mundane snippets. That’s always been my fascination, and I think it just innately happened. I almost wouldn’t know any other way; it’s my perception. I’ve always been really interested in zooming in or hyperfocusing on something. I can be quite obsessive over random things. Random images just stick with me.
How do you compare the meaning that gets applied to these images online versus in a gallery?
Although my work has a feeling of familiarity, everybody has their own memories attached to different things. I never want the paintings to be explicitly about something, but rather the connection the individual has to the work. Obviously, there is also the connection I have to the work. Similar to the internet, there are a thousand different interpretations about the same thing. That’s the conversation I want to open up. Whether it’s a wrestling worldstar video, which seems quite aggressive, decontextualised it suddenly becomes kind of romantic or more visually appealing.
At your opening, I kept overhearing people trying to guess who the figures were in the paintings.
Yeah, I’ve always had that since the football paintings. I’ve never wanted my work to be specifically about an individual. I want it to resemble the figure or parts of the image, but not necessarily the figure itself. It’s something I have to be aware of because people will recognise who it is, and I’ll be like oh s— people actually do recognise them and that adds another layer of meaning. Sometimes it is intentional, and sometimes it is less intentional. I guess it’s human, humans are wired to decode and ask, “Who’s that?”
You also created a dress for your fiancé that stylistically mirrored some of your paintings. Do you see your work going beyond paintings?
That is one of my focuses right now, world-building. Last year was my first time trying anything other than being a painter. It looks like having a more synonymous world attached to myself. Whether that’s events, fashion or art, I want them to run parallel. You can get rabbit-holed into doing what you do, and I want to challenge myself to keep that youthful exploration.
What else have you got coming up?
I have a trio show with Twilight Contemporary alongside Harry Hugo and Lily Bunney. They’re two artists who make a lot of sense for me to be exhibiting with. Last year felt like a year where I needed to challenge and bet on myself; this year is about building confidence off the back of that.
MORE: @mattia.guarnera
