...In an art world where, after many years, I often feel there is little new under the sun, I was awed by the work he showed me at Art Basil in Miami where I met him. The variety within his oeuvre bespeaks of his staying power, this is no one-act play. MATTEO’s passions and talent lie in new media and video art combined with sculpture, a complex combination with infinite possibilities. His work and accolades in the design, commercial entertainment and advertising industries have kept him on the edge of contemporary culture in the broadest sense. His lack of indoctrination by the art school system has whole-heartedly worked in his favor. He has taught himself everything he needs to know to realize his many visions and inscapes MATTEO is in a peripheral position as a cultural observer who brings the outside in and brings people in with him. He creates an art that the public and connoisseur’s can work with in ways familiar to them from the ubiquitous Internet experience while adding layers of visual complexity. His art responds to, challenges and reinvents the technology driven changes in human interaction and communication. MATTEO fluidly moves between forms constructed in real space and forms constructed in virtual space. These constructs are objects as well as sets/sites of action that may or may not be realized. His work is fraught with tension between the real and unreal, where ‘action’ is based on physical and mental activity of spectators who are pulled in to becoming participants. Matteo's work is a unique way of experiencing new media fused with sculpture. His technology driven sculptures reference the mediated post-modern experience through the fusion of the physical and virtual. His work has an elegant and refined presence, while light and animated imagery reflect fragments of and references to the contemporary visual culture that shapes our social environment. -Dr. Catherine Amidon publishes on art and new media in juried publications, magazines and exhibition catalogues. She has curated over thirty national and international exhibitions including a pavilion at the Venice Biennial. She was recently awarded a second Fulbright. She worked at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris while completing her Doctorate from the Sorbonne.