Gabriele Di Matteo

“Reflecting Velazquez” (“Riflettendo Velazquez”) is a version of Velazquez's major work on a 1:1 scale (318 x 276 cm), but this is a black and white and flipped over version, as “reflected” in a mirror. Gabriele Di Matteo’s work speaks about the meaning of the copy, the multiple, and the problem of authorship and authenticity.

In this mirror the painted work confronts the canvas that is being painted and all the characters play their roles directly confronting the many figures that observe the observer. The 'velazquian' mirror in a certain sense precedes the work of Di Matteo and the concept of re-figuration itself. It is also remarkable the fact that in the original painting the subject matter of the painting itself, namely the Kings of Spain, is hardly a blurry detail on a mirror. In this specular version of the original,

Di Matteo puts the viewer again in the position of looking at the real couple in the same in angle Velázquez did while he was painting them, thus creating the overlapping effect of a mirror of the mirror.

At the same time, this is also a work on photography, the election of the black and white for this version is due not so much to the fact that it is a copy, but that it is a copy of a photographic reproduction. Di Matteo’s work on “the copy” as a subject of his paintings is always based in photographic reproductions and almost never in originals; so, in a certain way, this piece pays homage to photography.

Di Matteo reflects about the power and autonomy of the image and the persuasive force of art, still linked to the romantic myth. The utopian fascination resides in the attempt of reproducing it mechanically; the artist who repaints these canvases can only do so imperfectly, in full awareness of the impossibility of producing an identical copy.

Gabriela Galati