critical anthology

walter mac mazzieri

Since a long time Walter Mac Mazzieri has attracted attention as one of the nodal points in the Italian "figurative" outline. You can't avoid quoting his work if you want to offer a qualified and "untrendy" range of young artists.
Shy, he cuts down human relations, being at ease only with himself. Even when he is caught at the tavern table ready for a popular toast, Mazzieri is, "at least" elsewhere, where toasts mean only standard habits, expected hypotheses, neither hoped nor feared.
However Mazzieri's interior strength prevails over the ridiculousness of conforming, even if this is accepted. It floods from the absence of gestures or from the unsaid words, bringing to light the images of a desecrated spell, whose protagonists are covered by the coolness of resignation and refer, with the unambiguous determination that characterizes them, to that future full of past elements they can't stop longing for in this uncertain present.
Not at all mythical, despite their strength and intensity making part of their own nature, Mazzieri's characters live the atmosphere of superstition and inquisition. On the one hand superstition seems to free them from events and shows them the itinerary to the future; on the other hand, inquisition, to which they seem subdued, takes them away from a world where they go on savouring family life. As a consequence these protagonists live the uncertainty of the present, the arrival of the departure.
In Mazzieri's paintings, the scene takes place "everywhere" and is orchestrated by figures and architectures of universal impact and meaning. It's almost charming to identify ourselves in them, even if we realize that they communicate, if not exactly anguish, surely worry about life. Mazzieri's characters don't accept to be simply spectators of life. And if they look like victims of the inquisition, at the same time they find in superstition, the signs of a final devotion to a "certain" life. The one that marks the colours of Iris and the fly of night birds or that winks at the wind direction.
Like Oscar wilde, Mazzieri knows that, through his characters he creates a "certain" life, the Life does not depend on other elements or that other elements don't affect it more than the ones that happen under whatever sky. That is precisely everywhere.

critical anthology

walter mac mazzieri