La Quinta

Matèria is pleased to present La Quinta, a group exhibition curated by Gaia Bobò, featuring works by José Angelino, Konstantinos Kyriakopoulos, Sofia Mascate, and Agnieszka Mastalerz.
The exhibition originates from the notion of the theatrical wing — la quinta — understood as a threshold separating operational space from performative space, concealing the mechanisms that make the scenic experience possible. In its capacity to define a boundary between the visible and the invisible, the quinta functions as a structure that hides the functional scaffolding of reality, allowing instead for a more cosmetic form of appearance. This dynamic, which underlies the experience of encountering art, nevertheless entails the exclusion of a portion of the real, generating an ambiguous perception that removes its submerged complexity.

The artists expand on these processes of concealment, highlighting their possible poetic articulations alongside an analysis of the invisible dynamics of control that orient individuals and collectivity. Across different perspectives, attention is directed toward the structural components of matter and their microscopic behaviour. Through a gradual shift in scale, the works explore the invisible conditioning that governs the movement of bodies and the ways in which space is inhabited. This reflection extends into a systemic perspective focused on the invisibilized processes of artistic creation.

The inquiry furthers a metalinguistic reflection on art as a system of opacity, in which the shadowing of reality becomes at once a poetic device and a deliberate gesture of removal. La Quinta does not seek to unveil what remains hidden, but rather to inhabit the threshold where visibility and obscurity continuously negotiate one another.