A Skin Made Porous

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.When the
soul lies down in that grass, the world is too
full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the
phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.”
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī
1

This introduction is bookended by two quotes, which
whilst seemingly oppositional, indicate something
intrinsic about the contradictory nature of our
experience. A condition which feels ever pertinent
when viewing our individual and collective exterior
and interior placement in the world. This existential
dichotomy provides a poetic seed from which this
exhibition has grown, and in turn become something
other. I hope that it provides viewers with a space
and opportunity to contemplate and recognise the
guarded self as a solitary entity, armoured. Yet our shells
are there to be breached, by an evolving process
of physical and metaphysical transformation.
The disperate emotional effects of the universe we
inhabit, allow us the potential to retreat or to
transcend towards a greater sense of separation or a
wider unity, where we and all become one.
2

“It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man
bungles his own life and the lives of others yet
remains totally incapable of seeing how much the
whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he
continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not
consciously, of course—for consciously he is
engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless
world that recedes further and further into
the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious
factor which spins the illusions that veil his
world. And what is being spun is a cocoon,
which in the end will completely envelop him.”
Carl Jung, ‘Aion’
3

Paul Benney (b. 1959)
Paul Benney was born in London and
currently lives and works in Suffolk. He
rose to international prominence as a
member of the Soho and East Village
Neo-Expressionist group, whilst living
and working in New York City in the
1980s where he worked and exhibited
alongside peers Marylyn Minter, Jean-
Michel Basquiat and David Wojnarovicz
among the many other others who made
up the exploding NY art scene. Despite
living and working in this extraordinary
creative environment Benney’s painting
maintained a uniquely English sensibility.
Collections including the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, The Brooklyn
Museum, The National Gallery of Australia
and The National Portrait Gallery in London,
The Royal Collection and The Eli Broad
Foundation own works. He has exhibited
in eight BP Portrait Award Exhibitions
and twice won the BP Visitors’ Choice
Award. Benney’s portrait subjects have
included HM Queen Elizabeth II, Sir Mick
Jagger, John Paul Getty III, 7th Marquess
of Bath, The State Portrait for Israel, Lord
Rothschild, as well as Ben Barnes for the
portrait in the feature film ‘A Portrait of
Dorian Grey’. Benney was invited to be
resident artist at Somerset House in 2010.
During his five year residency he held the
exhibition ‘Night Paintings’ in 2012 and
drew over 15,000 visitors. In 2017 his epic
painting and holosonic sound installation
‘Speaking in Tongues’ was a prominent
feature of the Venice Biennale.
Horror Vacui
digitally animated original painting on media player and monitor
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Phoebe Cummings (b. 1981)
Phoebe Cummings works predominantly
using unfired clay to make poetic and
performative sculptures and installations
that emphasise materiality, fragility, time,
creation, loss and decay. Her impressive
interventions are often constructed directly
on site, allowing an instinctive development
of tensions between object and location.
Cummings questions what we will carry
forward into the future by producing
intricate, hand made and exquisitely
delicate sculptures based on ancient plants
and primitive ritual, imbued with a sense
of magic and mysticism. Drawing together
elements of English Paganism as well as
the aesthetic excess of Baroque and Rococo
design, the resultant objects could be
considered as dystopian ornaments of a
future anthropology or fragile relics of an
almost forgotten past.
Cummings is a British artist born in
Walsall, England and currently resides
in Stafford. Cummings studied ceramics
at Brighton University in 2002 before
completing an MA in ceramics and glass
at the Royal College of Art in 2005.
She has undertaken a number of
international artist residencies including a
six month residency at the Victoria & Albert
Museum in 2010. In 2017 she won first place
at the inaugural Woman’s Hour Craft Prize
with work exhibited at the V&A Museum,
before touring to venues around the UK.
Cummings was selected as the winner of
the British Ceramics Biennial Award in
2011 and awarded a ceramics fellowship at
London’s Camden Arts Centre (2012–13).
‘Supernatural’ was her first solo exhibition
at Anima-Mundi. In addition, Cummings’
work has been featured in numerous group
exhibitions, including ‘60|40 Starting
Point Series’ at Siobhan Davies Studios,
London, ‘Formed Thoughts’ at Jerwood
Space, London; and ‘Swept Away: Dust,
Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and
Design’ at the Museum of Arts and Design,
New York. In 2013, she had a solo show
at the University of Hawaii Art Gallery in
Honolulu and The Newlyn Art Gallery.
Paleozoic Bouquet
unfired clay, glass, wood, wire, 60 x 25 x 25 cm
7

David Kim Whittaker (b. 1964)
Most of David Kim Whittaker’s paintings are
based upon a metaphysical interpretation
of the human head. These portrait portals,
are often ambiguous, with the aim of
representing the totality of the human
condition - both the universal and the
empathetic alongside personal experience.
The works often juggle dual states of inner
and outer calm and conflict, offering a glimpse
of simultaneous strength and fragility,
conscious and subconscious, masculine and
feminine. The paintings express Whittaker’s
constant focus on an attempt to express
something far greater than oneself. Recent
works depict the artists deep sensitivity
and increasing unease when confronted
with the compounding global tensions of
this particlar moment. A dual reflection of
hope and warning stares back at us from
the frame.
Whittaker is a British artist born in
Cornwall where they still reside.
Exhibitions have been held internationally,
notably including a major solo exhibition
at the prestigious Fondazione Mudima in
Milan in 2017. Works are in numerous
museum collections, art foundations and
international private collections. Whittaker
was further acknowledged in 2011 as the
recipient of the Towry Award (First Prize) at
the National Open Art Competition.
New Sunflowers
oil and acrylic on canvas, 180 x 140 cm
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Luke Frost (b. 1976)
Luke Frost is a British abstract painter
living and working in West Cornwall.
Despite his notable heritage, as Son of
the English painter Anthony Frost and
the Grandson of the celebrated Modernist
painter Sir Terry Frost, his paintings could
be seen to instead echo a formality found in
1960s American hard-edge, post-painterly,
abstraction. However Frost has developed
his own means of exploring complex
colour relationships, be they harmonious
or provocative, and their impact on their
surroundings alongside an internal and
more contemplative space.
Frost began exhibiting in 2003 following
studies at Falmouth and Bath Schools
of Art. His work was featured in ‘Art
Now Cornwall’ at Tate St Ives in 2007
and in 2008 he was awarded a Tate St
Ives artist in residency during which
time he worked at Porthmeor Studio No.
5, formerly occupied by Ben Nicholson
and Patrick Heron. His solo exhibition
‘Paintings in Five Dimensions’ was shown
at Tate St Ives in 2009. He has since
exhibited in Cornwall, London and USA,
with essays written on his work by Matthew
Collings, Tony Godfrey and Michael Klein.
Neutral Grey & Blue Volts
acrylic on cavnvas, 102 x 102 cm
11

Pale Brilliant Blue Volts
acrylic on aluminium, 84 x 84 cm
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Youki Hirakawa (b. 1983)
‘Untitled (Tear)’ is a video by Youki Hirakawa
documenting a fallen tear drop. As time passes
it shows the different phases of the shape of
the tear as it dries. Through his still and
installation-based video artwork, Hirakawa
explores a mysterious and immeasurable
sense of time, loss and longing. His imagery
is imbued with a melancholic quality,
reconnecting a fragile past with a vivid
present casting questions over the future.
He creates a form of video-poetry which
summons the voice of the lost. Hirakawa
constructs his artworks as if to reveal hidden
memories or narratives contained within
the subject, resuscitating sensibilities that
may have since been obscured, primarily
through progressive human activity.
Hirakawa is a Japanese contemporary
artist born in Nagoya, Japan in 1983. He
currently lives and works in Toyota, Japan,
following a long residency in Berlin,
Germany. He was invited to show at the
‘48th International Film Festival Rotterdam’
and ‘65th International Short Film Festival
Oberhausen’ in 2019 and has held solo
exhibitions internationally, including Ando
Gallery, Tokyo, Double Square Gallery,
Taipei, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin,
Kunstkraftwerk, Leipzig, Minokamo City
Museum, Japan. Hirakawa has also been
invited to exhibit in international art
festivals including Digital Art Festival
Taipei 2017, International Contemporary
Art Festival Kaunas in 2016, Sapporo
International Art Festival 2014 and Aichi
Triennale 2013. His inaugural solo exhibition
‘Secret Fire’ at Anima Mundi was held
in 2016 and his follow up ‘A River Under
Water’ in 2018. In 2017 he was finalist of
Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Works are held
in numerous public and private collections.
Untitled (Tear)
single channel video
15

Agnes Treherne (b. 1987)
Agnes Treherne lives and works in Sussex.
Her work is concerned with how our
thoughts and articulations are informed
by the environments in which we live. She
works from the premise that the act of
drawing, and the attention it gives to what
is being drawn, is fruitful both to the artist
and the subject, so that the existence of
both is enriched by the other. When there
is a figurative element in her paintings
and drawings, it is often to convey both
connection and dislocation. Her paintings
are based on observations of daily life and
the landscape which surrounds her, like
stills from a film, where time has stopped
and imprinted the situation in a refined
and eternal light. The characters, when
they appear, often seem simultaneously
overwhelmed yet integrated offering a
profound sense of awe, humility, yet also
hope and reassurance within the prosaic
yet sublime settings.
/
Bucks Stream
oil on birch panel, 53 x 61 cm
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Cinderhill
oil on birch panel, 53 x 61 cm
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Cinderhill
oil on birch panel, 53 x 61 cm
19

Joy Wolfenden Brown (b. 1961)
Joy Wolfenden Brown’s intimate oil
paintings feel hauntingly familiar,
possessing a raw emotional, honesty. She
captures fleeting fragments of memory,
moments in time where the inherent
vulnerability of the figures depicted, often
in isolation, is palpable. These are lovingly
yet spontaneously executed reflections
on the human condition, which have an
unnervingly, yet simultaneously comforting,
unguarded quality.
Joy Wolfenden Brown is a British artist born
in Stamford, Lincolnshire. She currently
lives in Bude, North Cornwall. She graduated
from Leeds University then completed a
post-graduate diploma in Art Therapy at
Hertfordshire College of Art & Design
which she worked as for ten years before
moving to Cornwall in 1999. Since then
she has had numerous solo exhibitions
and was the First Prize Winner in The
National Open Art Competition, 2012. She
was also awarded the Somerville Gallery
painting prize in 2003 and first prize
winner at the Sherborne Open in 2007
and the Evolver prize at The RWA in 2019
and the Judges Choice at the Chaiya Art
Award 2023. Works were acquired by the
Anthony Pettullo Outsider Art Collection
in Milwaukee with further works held in
collections worldwide.
Her Inward Glance
oil on canvas, 52 x 37 cm
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If I Rise On The Wings Of The Dawn (Psalm 139 vs 9)
oil on paper, 33 x 21 cm
22

Oceans
oil on paper, 31 x 21 cm
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Secret Heart
oil on board, 42 x 30 cm
25

Carlos Zapata (b. 1963)
Carlos Zapata predominately makes
idiosyncratic carved and painted wooden
sculpture alongside mixed media
installation. His work deals with many
challenging and potent humanist themes
including poverty, conflict, religion
and race, yet perhaps paradoxically, the
overriding characteristics of the work are of
emotive empathy and compassion. Zapata’s
work belongs to and takes inspiration from
folk and tribal artforms from all over the
world but specifically from South America,
from its indigenous populace and the
trade routes and traditions that have fed it
over the centuries. Many of his sculptures
have evolved from personal experience of
living in a foreign land and from his home
country where civil issues continue to
trouble its people.
Carlos Zapata is a Colombian artist who
currently lives and works near Falmouth in
Cornwall, UK. He has exhibited extensively
internationally with works held in numerous
private and museum collections around
the world.
Faith
polychromed wood, 42 x 30 x 13 cm
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Vessel
polychromed wood, 18 x 27 x 20 cm
29

Sam Lock (b. 1973)
Sam Lock’s considered and expressive,
often large scale, abstract paintings embrace
the principle that change is a process not
an event. A meditation on the continual
flow and movement both around us and
within us inspires each gesture. They are
not made with a system or fixed process
but through an energy that embraces both
change and chance, in a manner that is
both organic and unscripted, following its
own path until there is a balance between
presence and absence. There are silences
and hiding places that are both poetic and
activating, and a physicality and immediacy,
where his aim to ‘submit’ himself to the
canvas, eliminates extraneous thought in
order to guarantee a purity of response.
A response arising through concentration
and intuition where thought and action, go
hand-in-hand. This is what Lock refers to
as the ‘poetry of moments’, of the spiritual
nature of now becoming then, and how
what started as waves of actions, becomes
a forest of memory. Lock is interested
in marks, resulting in paintings, that
communicate both instantly and slowly - to
slow down perception, and to create forms
that don’t reveal themselves fully, all at
once, through a filling up and emptying
of space and surface; traces and echoes
exist in a palimpsest, a build-up of painted
marks, layers and statements that conceal
and reveal, where time becomes held in
a concrete way and the painting achieves
a physical weight and substance. These
layers allow you to swim in and out of the
painting, they lead back in time, retaining
a mystery and dynamism of the moment
rather than a recollection of a misty
lost past.
Sam Lock was born in London and now
lives and works near Brighton with his
studio in a converted industrial unit further
up the coast. Lock studied at Edinburgh
College of Art and Edinburgh University,
graduating in 1997 with MA’s in both Fine
Art and Art History. During his training,
he won a scholarship to travel to Rome,
and explore the relationship between
history, archaeology and the processes
of painting, a preoccupation which still
forms the conceptual basis that underpins
his practice.
Shadow Is Yours I
mixed media on canvas, 240 x 120 cm
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Shadow Is Yours II
mixed media on canvas, 240 x 120 cm
33

Gabriel Tendai Choto (b. 1995)
Gabriel Tendai Choto’s artwork combines
the twin disciplines of printmaking and
painting. Through his singular technique
Choto seeks new pathways into the painted
image by taking cues from the surface quality
produced by the printmaking process. His
evolving, experimental practice involves
layering painted areas of naturalism over
the delicate compositional architecture
of etching, resulting in paintings where
physical presence and absence imply a
metaphoric liminal state. Sensitive and
intimate, these images include close family
members, depicting quiet moments of
contemplation or affectionate domestic
scenes taken from old photographs,
increasingly progressing in to self portraits
where through constructed situations the
artist examines his own identity. Choto’s
intimate paintings draw on themes of
home, pride, identity diaspora, change
and personal as well as cultural fragility.
Choto was born in 1995 in Harare, Zimbabwe.
He was raised in Bradford, Yorkshire and
currently lives and works in London. After
completing his Diploma in Art and Design
at Leeds Arts University in 2012, Choto
gained a BAFA in Drawing from Camberwell
College of Art (UAL), London, in 2014
and more recently has completed an MFA
at Central St Martins, London. Selected
group exhibitions include FBA Futures,
Mall Galleries, London, UK (2018); Flock,
GX Gallery, London, UK (2017); Blxckout
Revolution: The Exhibition, 198 Gallery,
London, UK (2017); BAME, Hotel Elephant
Gallery, London, UK (2016); and Long Live
the New Flesh, Tower Gallery, London, UK
(2015). In 2018, Choto was selected for the
Clyde & Co Art Award. Choto’s debut solo
exhibition at Anima Mundi featured in 2021
and most recently he has been personally
invited by Yinka Shonibare to submit for
the 2021 RA Summer Exhibition.
Stranding
oil on panel, 61 x 122 cm
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Malcolm Pate (b. 1998)
Malcolm Pate is a Canadian artist whose
work explores the evocative nature of
light. Pate uses naturally occurring
and generated light to create ethereal
echoes of reality. Employing cognitive
neuroscientific theories of associative
memory, visual object identification, and
pattern recognition, he seeks to distil each
subject to their core essence - a ghostly
reflection of the world we perceive. His
work explores where simplified patterns
and systems bring personal memories into
focus, evoking a unique response in the
viewer, one that often defies description
in words but instead conjures connection
and feeling. As we face a future where
nature as we know it may be little more
than a memory, Pate endeavours to discover
pathways to maintain our connection to the
peace it provides.
A graduate of fine art at Chelsea College
of Art, Pate’s work has been shown
internationally at Aomori Museum of Art
(Japan), Barbican Art Gallery (UK), Eltuek
Arts Centre (Canada), Fosun Foundation
(China), Louise Blouin Foundation Gallery
(UK), McIntosh Gallery (Canada), New
Museum (USA), and the Southbank Centre
(UK), among others.
Flock
human silhouettes are flocked like a murmuration of starlings - custom software video
43

Jamie Mills (b. 1983)
Jamie Mills’ practice is underpinned by an
investigation surrounding the dissemination
of gesture between materiality and
environments – referencing both internal
and external landscapes. These concerns are
reinforced by an interdisciplinary approach
to working and are made manifest through
the renderings of materials often sourced
or retrieved via immersion into nature or
borderlands The term ‘gestalt’ refers to a
concept within psychotherapeutic fields,
inferring that the nature of a whole is
greater than the sum of its parts. Mills’
employment of the mediums of photography,
sound and mark-making can be read in this
sense whereby a reality is constructed
not by the sole surface representation of
any individual element alone, but instead
there is a sense that the artists reality
is presented through the relationships
and the spaces between elements. In other
terms, it is work that requires both on
one hand a stepping away from, and on
the other an immersion into, in order
to extract an empathetic understanding
of the essence of the work that presides
from both a conscious and subconscious
framework of mind. Universally inherent
within his process of rendering, there
is a conscious dialogue between, on one
hand material intent (or ‘essence’) and on
the other, control (or the relinquishing
of control), so as to make work that
negotiates thresholds and occupies at
times a liminal status. In this sense Mills’
“intuitively composed” sound works, and
his images or assemblages become markers
to a series of internal journeys or rituals
informed by an often poetic dialogue
between material, form and environment.
Sentinal Absolve
rubber, cotton skrim, thread, beeswax, 21.5 x 13.5 x 4 cm
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Sentinel Refuge
rubber, wool, cotton scrim, thread . 32 × 21 × 6.5 cm
38

Open Sentry
rubber, wool, cotton scrim, thread . 58 × 16 × 11.5 cm
39

Bandaged Object (A Device for Holding and Waiting)
distemper on canvas, mixed fabric, thread, wood, fastenings, stone . 71 x 12 x 11 cm
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Jonathan Michael Ray (b. 1984)
Jonathan Michael Ray’s ‘mono no aware’
artworks examine the multilayered
histories, fictions and beliefs assigned
to artefacts, materials and the places he
encounters. A practice comprising of
stained glass, photography, sculpture,
print, drawing, video and installation,
much of his work is deeply connected to
his surroundings. He regularly uses found
objects and images imbued with their
own histories, as well as material direct
from the landscape, appropriating their
symbolism while creating a new context
and meaning. By layering and combining
material, he is interested in looking beyond
the surface of a purely physical existence
and breaking down the institutions by
which we are taught to see and experience
the world. His work alludes to the sublime
power that inanimate material and objects
can contain when we give them space, time
and authority to do so.
Jonathan Michael Ray was born in High
Wycombe, UK and has been based in
West Cornwall since 2018. He studied at
Nottingham Trent in 2007 and at Slade
School of Fine Art in 2016. In 2022 Ray’s
work was the subject of a two person
exhibition alongside Willeminha Barnes
Graham at Tate St Ives. In 2023, following
his solo exhibition “Long Way Home” at
Anima Mundi, Ray was commissioned to
produce a new sculpture for Tremenheere
Sculpture Garden, which the garden has
since acquired. Ray’s sculpture ‘Dark
Lith’ is on a long term display at The
New Art Centre, Roche Court. In addition
he co-curated “Ud Rocashaas”, a group
exhibition at Hweg Gallery, Penzance.
The Widow’s Gift
stained glass fragments and lead in LED backlit frame, 56.5 x 43.5 cm
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The Astrologer’s Misfortune
stained glass fragments and lead in LED backlit frame, 56.5 x 43.5 cm
46

Out of this World
stained glass fragments and lead in LED backlit frame, 57.5 x 43.5 cm
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Arthur Lanyon (b. 1985)
Arthur Lanyon paintings combine intuitive
figurative motifs with an emotive, gestural,
abstracted language. His energetic works
are sited on a physical and metaphysical
cross roads, like a belay between numerous
visual and emotional pinnacles. They offer
a progressive link between the outside
world, the inner architecture of the
brain, altered states of consciousness,
memory and the unencumbered essence of
child’s drawing.
Arthur Lanyon is a British artist born
in Leicester, England in 1985. He lives
and works from a studio near Penzance,
Cornwall. Born in to an artistic family, his
father was the painter Matthew Lanyon and
his grandfather the celebrated, influential
and world renowned modernist painter
Peter Lanyon. He won the Hans Brinker
Painting Award in Amsterdam in 2007 and
gained a first class degree in Fine Art
from Cardiff University in 2008. Upon
graduating he was featured in Saatchi’s
‘New Sensations’ exhibition. In 2014,
his work was in the long-list for the
Aesthetica Art Prize and was included in
the award’s published anthology. His debut
Anima Mundi solo exhibition ‘Return
to Whale’ opened in 2016, which was
followed by ‘White Chalk Lines in 2018,
‘Arcade Laundry’ in 2020 and ‘Coda for an
Obol’ in 2022. Works have been exhibited
extensively, notably including Untitled Art
Fair in Miami; Zona Maco, Mexico City;
the Saatchi Gallery London; The House of
St Barnabas, London; CGK, Copenhagen;
Tat Art, Barcelona and Herrick Gallery,
Mayfair. Arthur Lanyon paintings are held
in private collections worldwide.
Mouth of Conduit
oil, oil stick, charcoal, gesso, spray paint, collage on linen, 217 x 170 cm
49

Simon Hitchens (b. 1967)
Simon Hitchens’ work explores the
interconnectedness between the human
and the non-human, as a means to
learning about Mankind’s relationship with
impermanence. The material backbone of
his work is rock in its raw and natural
state. This is not carved and polished
but plucked from the rock face or quarry
floor. He remains acutely aware of the
historical significance that stone has as the
prime material to make sculpture, and as
a sculptor is challenged to make art that
contributes to this debate. As a climber
he maintains an intimate relationship with
rock, and is acutely aware that geologically
it is the very material that supports us upon
the planet. In the age of the Anthropogenic
it seems pertinent to question how we
comprehend the geological and human
worlds as united, interconnected even.
Hitchens believes there is increasingly
a disconnect between these two worlds.
which is harmful not only to the planet but
also our psyche. Consequently, rock is the
conceptual focus of his work and typically
the material backbone within it. His work
questions differences between animate and
inanimate, more specifically rock and flesh,
mountain and body; exploring themes of
transience and transcendence. He makes
post-human hybrid forms that negotiate a
numinous space somewhere between rock
and flesh: a line of inquiry into the nature
of being.
Simon Hitchens graduated in Fine Art
from the University of the West of England
in 1990 and his work has been exhibited
around the world since then. He frequently
exhibits in solo and group exhibitions,
undertaking private commissions and
numerous largescale public commissions.
He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society
of Sculptors in 1998, is an RWA Academician
and is the fourth generation of artists in
his family.
More Than Human
rock, wax, resin, 28 x 50 x 36 cm
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A Certain Reciprocity
rock, wax, resin, 22 x 38 x 17 cm
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A Certain Reciprocity
rock, wax, resin, 17 x 45 x 34 cm
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More Than Human
rock, wax, resin, 25 x 34 x 38 cm
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Marija Rinkevičiūtė (b. 1993)
Marija Rinkevičiūtė is a painter and musician
living and working in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Her specific interest lies in the phenomena
of colour, light, emotional experience and
intuition. Rinkevičiūtė’s process leads to
abstract expression as a vehicle to poetically
allude to the ephemerality of memory. She
finds colour relativity, elusiveness and the
impact on human psychology or particular
fascination. “A painting, to me, is a complex
organism that is not a coloured “facade”,
but rather a set of experiences of particular
space and time.”
Rinkevičiūtė received her BA degree in
monumental art from the Vilnius Academy
of Arts with time spent at the Academie
Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
She has participated in solo and group
exhibitions internationally
.
A Broken Painting
mixed media on linen mounted on wooden panel, 30 x 20 cm
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Untitled
distemper on linen mounted on wooden panel, 30 x 20 cm
58

It Was Sunny Yesterday
dust, wax, pigment on linen mounted on wooden panel, 30 x 20 cm
59

Massimo Angei (b. 1962)
Massimo Angèi’s elemental, tempestuous
yet ethereal oil paintings reflect varied
emotional states whilst remaining open to
physical and metaphysical interpretation.
Tableaus and forms are suggested but
never fully established, perhaps evoking
landscape, weather patterns, natural
systems, inner psychology or spiritual
connectedness. Voluptuous cloud-like
billows intersperse with delicate spiralling
marks forming an ecstatic unity reminiscent
of both renaissance grandeur and primitive
automatic drawing.
Massimo Angèi was born in La Spezia, Italy,
he currently lives and works in Sarzana,
near the borderline between Liguria
and Tuscany. Following art school, he
collaborated with various institutions and
museums exhibiting early representational
depictions of flora and fauna. After finishing
his degree at the Fine Arts Academy in
Carrara/Painting (Accademia di Belle
Arti\Pittura), he participated in his first
exhibitions, and the creation of the Idioma
group along with Marco Casentini, Fabio
Linari, Jacopo Bruno, Andrea Geremia.
He then began to work as an independent
freelance photographer working for photo
agencies including Grazia Neri of Milan,
and Bilderberg of Hamburg, publishing his
images in both Italian and international
magazines. A vivid dream in the spring of
2006 made him realise that his destiny was
as a painter, and he vowed to never again
abandon it.
Odore di ruggine (The Smell of Rust)
oil on board, 47 x 40 cm
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Ricordi confusi (Confused Memories)
oil on board, 47 x 40 cm
62

Linee solide e tenere (Solid and Tender Lines)
oil on board, 47 x 40 cm
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Published by Anima Mundi to coincide with ’A Skin Made Porous’
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