Giuseppe Mastromatteo

Mastromatteo was born on August 6, 1970 in Busto Arsizio, Italy.

After a spending his early years as a recordist assistant inside a record company, Mastromatteo graduated from Milan's Accademia di Comunicazione with a degree in art direction.

In 2006 he established his work as a conceptual photographercollaborating with the Triennale Museum of Milan as art director and creating the iconic image for the opening of the new Triennale Museum in Milan Bovisa.

Mastromatteo’s works have been exhibited in various art galleries, cultural institutions and museums as well as at national and international art fairs. His artwork has been published in art books as well contemporary art magazines around the world.

He's been working in Milan and New York. He currently lives and works in Milan, where he’s also Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy Italy.

In 2009 Mastromatteo started his iconic work series Indepensense

The Indepensense series was created between 2009 and 2012.

This series could be collages, but take advantage of the subtlety of digital technology to reproduce humanity in impossible and illusory dimensions like hands have eyes, faces are ripped, human anatomy is surgically rearranged with no blood flowing in these absurd images.

— Photography Office

Ripped faces, eyes and ears which run through hands, are the centre of an imaginary truth that draws inspiration from the visions of Magritte and Man Ray to land inside a new visual synthesis with stylistic patterns representing the most contemporary photography of our time, in a continuous overlapping of visual languages that live in the world of advertising and genuine research.

— Trendland

Mastromatteo's Indepensense artwork has been also featured on fiction book covers and prominent TV adverts in Italy.

Masturbation is a practical activity practiced by everyone since always, and it doesn’t make you blind, as they told me it did when I studied with priests at school, on the contrary it serves as a way to see even better and also more in depth. Masturbation is a creative action which helps develop the genital organs, which makes them more familiar to us, increase our confidence with them and expands our fantasy. Sometimes, masturbation satisfies us much more than certain wives and girlfriends. Today technology permits us to masturbate not only physically, but virtually as well. The software and hardware offered by the market make it possible for us to masturbate continuously, developing our creative talents. Technological masturbation is not a simple activity: producing creativity that avoids the risk of homologation, is an exercise which very few are really capable of. So, well done to Mastromatteo, who proposes and brings us something new through a masturbation that will surely never make him blind, on the contrary will help everyone see a bit better.

— Oliviero Toscani

In 2013 Mastromatteo issued a legal warning to the Swiss watch manufacturer Swatch over legal rights for using in its international advertising campaign images that were too similar to the Indepensense artwork.

In 2015 one of Indepensense's series was donated by Mastromatteo for the charity auction organized for the Comunità Nuova Onlus in partnership with Christie’s Italia, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Open Care – Servizi per l’arte and UBS

The Indepensense work has been followed by the Homogenic Series and – most recently – by the Eyedentikit series.

Eyedentikit presents a series of portraits, in which the artist becomes the protagonist, and puts parts of himself into his musings on human identity. An extremely important part, namely the eyes and the gaze, which represent the essence, the site of creation for every photographer.

• FONDAZIONE CAPRI, Capri 2017
• MIA FAIR, Milan 2012, 2013,2014 2015, 2016, 2017
• SUMMERIZE, C.A.M. Gallery, Istanbul 2016
• ART WYNWOOD, Miami 2016
• SIGNS BASE, Milan 2016
• HOMOGENIC, CAM Gallery, Istanbul 2015
• ARTEFIERA, Bologna 2015
• ART ISTANBUL, C.A.M. Gallery, Istanbul 2014
• DOUBLE VISION, Palazzo Delle Stelline, Milan 2014
• WANDERWALLS FDV, Milan 2014
• BIENNAL CHINA\ITALY, Beijing-China 2014
• HOMOGENIC, Palazzo Tovegni, Turin 2014
• 20 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHY, Milan 2013
• ART ISTANBUL, C.A.M. Gallery, Istanbul 2012
• LIQUID VISION, Fondazione Forma Foto, Milan 2012
• BIENNAL ITALY\CHINA, Milan 2012
• RED DOT MIAMI, Miami 2012
• ART PALM BEACH, Florida USA 2012
• INDEPENSENSE 2, Fabbrica Eos, Milan 2012
• INDEPENSENSE, Emmanuel Fremin Gallery, New York 2012
• SCOPE Art Fair, Emmanuel Fremin Gallery, New York 2012
• ART HAMPTON Bridgehampton, New York 2012
• ART PARIS Art Fair, Paris 2012
• ART GREENWICH, New York 2011
• CUTLOG, Paris 2011
• GOOD LUCK LUCK LOOK, San Salvatore Gallery, Modena 2010
• HIDENTITIES, MC2 Gallery, 2010 Milan
• INDEPENSENSE, Lattuada Studio – II Diaframma, Milan 2009
• PARIS PHOTO, Paris 2009
• INDEPENSENSE, Fabbrica Eos, Milan 2009
• MUSEO CASORIA, Permanent Collection, Naples 2007
• MIART, Milan 2006, 2008, 2009