Actos Heroicos
Courtesy of the exhibitor:
About the work: Mateo Maté (Spain, 1964) lives and works in Madrid. He graduated in a MA in FINE ARTS at the University Complutense of Madrid and holds a Fine Art degree by the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid. He uses everyday objects , even often associated with its own domestic routine , to explore how late modernity in the spaces we inhabit are traversed by tensions and violence in which the intimate and the social , political and existential , the individual and the collective intermingle and confuse . Interested in the symbolic potential of cartographic metaphor , Maté creates sculptural and performative spaces that are at once familiar , we generated a profound bewilderment , as if they were riddled with pitfalls , disturbing enigmas. In his works , the artist argues that in a context such as this, in which our immediate environments have become indecipherable and full of threats and uncertainties geographies, we have to rethink and reinvent the notion of living , to be able to overwhelm our eyes and return to the realization spaces and objects around us, often using irony and looking for the critical involvement of spectators.
About the curator: Imma Prieto is an art critic, independent curator, and Professor of Contemporary  Art and New Media at Eram, University of Girona, and in the Master’s program of New Media and Curatorial Studies at the University Ramon Llull, Barcelona. She writes regularly for the La Vanguardia supplement,cultura/s, Bonart art magazine, and the electronic art magazine A* Desk. She is a member of the research groups, “Contemporary art theories” at the UdG, “Political files in contemporary artistic practices” of the MEC, and has been manager of the European research group ELAA (European Live Art Archive), formed by the University of Girona, the University of Oxford, and the artists residence Glaugair in Berlin. She is member of the AICA (International Association of Art Critics), and the IAC (Spanish Art Institute).
