IT

At A plus A Gallery in Venice, through works that intertwine painting and sculpture, Mattia Sinigaglia offered a deeply personal interpretation of the relationship between humans and animals. Starting from a glance. 

It was nighttime when Mattia Sinigaglia (b. 1989, Sirmione) came face to face with the fox that would inspire his exhibition The Animal That Therefore I Am. While driving, the animal darted across the road in front of him. A sudden stop. A fleeting encounter ‒ an unexpected, rapid exchange of glances. This form of connection, although silent, has something intense and primordial in it. The title of the exhibition is drawn from a text by philosopher Jacques Derrida, who recounted a similar moment: stepping out of the shower, he found himself being watched by his cat, and was overcome by a sense of shame. 

MATTIA SINIGAGLIA ON SHOW IN VENICE 

At the dawn of time, the relationship between humans and animals was more immediate and frequent. Animals were central to mythology, revered as deities. The very origins of art, in the caves of Lascaux, are rooted in this primordial encounter between human and animal. Today, that connection is more mediated. Derrida argues that humanity is now clothed in technique ‒ that is, in culture. In Sinigaglia’s canvases, it is the symbolic elements inherited from Western cultural history, from art to science, that stand between the depicted animal’s gaze and the human eye of the viewer. 
On view at A plus A Gallery in Venice through March 21, 2025, The Animal That Therefore I Am is Sinigaglia’s first solo show composed of his whole artistic production developed over four years. Ti vede ‒ the painting that captures the fox encounter ‒marked the beginning of this journey. The exhibition included two types of works: large-scale paintings and sculptural paintings. Entirely new and never before exhibited, the pieces are composed of a variety of materials, including hand-carved wooden frames, ceramic elements and metal leaf. The narrative unfolds through the interplay of these diverse media ‒ through their dialogue. 

SINIGAGLIA’S EXHIBITION AT A PLUS A GALLERY 

Sinigaglia’s process is never the same. Sometimes it begins with a lived experience, as in FlyDance, inspired by a sweltering summer afternoon when a buzzing fly disrupted the stillness of his studio. The abstract painting captures the rhythm and movement of his attempt to shoo the insect away. At other times, inspiration comes from the intricate grain of fine woods ‒ plane tree or chestnut ‒ sourced from carpenters in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, where Sinigaglia lives and works. The creative process is not linear. Though he may begin with a sketch or concept, the material itself often reshapes the idea. The artist starts with the search for an image; then comes the frame, followed by a sculptural element to fill a void ‒ or vice versa. Media shift fluidly, with no clear hierarchy. 
Mattia Sinigaglia shows the ancestral bond between humanity and animality. He does so by disrupting traditional structures of dominance ‒ both among the subjects of his works and within the materials themselves. The result is a dynamic interchange of narrative and compositional planes that is never predictable, never the same. 

Alice Longo 

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Translated with AI