ANDREA MASTROVITO CREATES DELIGHTFUL COLLAGE INSTALLATIONS IN WHICH HUNDREDS OF NATURE ILLUSTRATIONS POPULATE AN EMPTY ROOM IN A DENSE PAPER DIORAMA.
Mastrovito’s work, by exploring a space somewhere in between the reinvention of the artist and the reinvention of drawing in a continuous dialogue with the cycle of life and in open confrontation with audiences and communities, is characterized by its ongoing plastic evolution – a defining trait of a significant portion of contemporary Italian art, from Alighiero Boetti to Stefano Arienti.
In 2009, he produced his first Enciclopedia dei fiori da Giardino, in which the concepts of assemblage and collage took on a markedly spatial quality. This set the stage for a later work, The Island of Dr. Mastrovito, first presented in 2010 at Governors Island (New York): thousands of pages taken from volumes of zoology and botany were cut out and displayed three-dimensionally, like in a pop-up book. The exhibition space is invaded and the distance between viewer and work of art is eliminated, and the cycle of life takes the center stage of the artist’s efforts.
The Island of Dr. Mastrovito II, view of the ultimate installation at MUDAC, Lausanne, 1200 cutout books, variable dimensions, 2012
