Mattia Biagi was born in northern Italy in 1974 and currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. The dynamics of transformation is a driving concept and process behind Biagi’s work. His early work explored the transformative power of coating everyday objects with layers of black tar, an art punk aesthetic of recontextualizing familiar objects and subverting longstanding symbols of culture and domestic life. In contrast to covering objects, his latest works represent a different kind of transformation, of something from nothing. Hands can’t touch hot tar, but by working in raw plaster, Biagi is able to create form directly by sculpting it, presenting the process and promise of transformation through gesture and touch, the formation of being from dust.
The dynamics of transformation is a driving concept and process behind Biagi’s work, in particular the transformative power of coating everyday objects with layers of viscous tar. Biagi celebrates an art punk aesthetic of recontextualizing familiar objects and subverting longstanding symbols of culture and domestic life. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina and the Louvre Museum in Dubai.