Matteo Attruia, Noemi Durighello – Lei è meglio di me (She’s better than me)
SMDOT/Contemporary Art is delighted to present in Udine the two-artist exhibition by Matteo Attruia and Noemi Durighello, entitled “Lei è meglio di me”
“She’s better than me” is not a declaration of surrender, but a provocation that challenges comparison, judgement and hierarchy in the art world.
The exhibition brings together two radically different artistic practices. On one hand, an emerging artist whose practice centres on abstract painting, exploring the physical power of colour, gesture and material, moving between large-scale canvases and works of minimal dimensions. His painting does not represent: it happens, transforming the canvas into a living space of intensity and time. On the other, a conceptual artist who intervenes through words, neon, photographs, objects and installations. With irony, intuition, cynicism and genius, he undermines what appears obvious and transforms language into ambiguous territory, suspended between confession and provocation, truth and fiction.
The title evokes the relationship between a man and a woman, but raises broader questions. Who is “she,” really? And what does it mean to be “better”? A compliment may conceal seduction, competition or a subtle form of power. “She” also becomes Art itself: inspiration, rival and judge, capable of fuelling desire and recognition, but also hierarchy and exclusion.
The exhibition thus brings two complementary forces into dialogue: colour gives physical form to what cannot be said; words destabilise what appears visible. The public, too, is called upon to take a stand, because every preference reveals the viewer’s criteria, desires and conception of Art. Or at least that is what we like to think. For, while we try to decide who or what is “better,” the opposite might happen: it is the works themselves that observe us, gauge our hesitations and form their own judgement, without feeling obliged to communicate it to us.