Malammore

Renata Fabbri is delighted to present Malammore: the first solo exhibition in Italy by French artist Matthieu Haberard (Toulouse, 1991) to be hosted in the gallery. On show are a series of new works – including his latest production of sculptural and pictorial works – characterised by a scenographic and installatory dimension.

Drawing inspiration from the universe of consumer goods and in particular from that of children’s toys, Matthieu Haberard’s artistic practice investigates the threshold between childhood and adulthood: that mysterious interior border that lies between youth – theatre of fantastical scenarios, metamorphosis, titanic enterprises and undertakings – and the attainment of what is conventionally recognised as the full psychic and physical development of the human being. It is in this limbo, so ambiguous and yet full of potential, that Haberard’s poetics becomes concrete, poised between the naïve imagination of the infant and an ironic representation of reality.

Through a playful and sarcastic gaze, Haberard thus gives rise to fanciful, bizarre and sometimes grotesque sculptures, made by hand from simple materials. Apparently at rest, the latter feed on the mystical and chivalrous imagery of the Middle Ages, recalling symbols and iconographies that contemporary Western culture seems to have forgotten. Among them are masks, swords, shields, scales and armour, characterised by bright colours and meticulously decorated: fictitious relics that act as caricatures of the contemporary. Challenging the limits of our imagination, they remind us of the blurred boundary between play and violence, innocence and malice, childlike desire and disillusionment that inevitably emerges with maturity.

It is on such fragile dichotomies that Haberard builds playful protections, falsely threatening defensive weapons that demystify the violence they represent, attacking and at the same time mocking our own inner dimensions. Thus, inanimate beings, suspended in a static epiphany, watch over the rooms of the Renata Fabbri Gallery, claiming their presence both on canvas and in the form of three-dimensional objects. As space-time gateways, they invite us to enter a fantastic realm in which love and fear blend into a boundless and prolific ambiguity of meaning.