Nataly Maier from Milan
Your new daily ritual ...
Normal things became important: sleep, eat, phone. There is a lack of concentration to work, and the material available for painting is limited. Errors and waste are not allowed. I anxiously await the Civil Protection bulletin 18.00, while at 19.00 my highlight of the day begins, “the Hauskonzert” by pianist Igor Levit. I am lucky enough to live with my partner who cooks very well, and now the time has come to feed ourselves above all from the well-stocked pantry, fruit of the intense work of preparing summer preserves.
How your way of working has changed?
A strange phenomenon happens. Generally, you work better with a deadline or a specific project, and we are used to giving ourselves discipline. Now, instead, it seems that the interlocutor is missing, the vision of the future. The situation reminds me of the summer of 1999, the moment of total eclipse experienced in Basilicata. Around counter time all sounds stopped and the light turned not into darkness, in “not light”. A still moment, stagnant. The works I created during this period of closure were created without me realizing it. One evening I started working almost in the dark, I didn't turn on the light so as not to wake up... If in general I worry about the contemporaneity of painting, in recent days I have had proof that painting is always the product of its time. If it's deep, touches something universal.
With which objects and spaces of your daily life are you interacting the most?
Alas, I smelled the media, this well of a world, this incubator of feelings that are mistaken for opinions. In my opinion a source of our current democratic problems. I've always thought that social media is bad for creativity: “the rose is born from boredom...”.
How do you imagine the world, when everything will start again?
At first I deluded myself that this crisis would improve the world, that it would be understood that our planet is a boat, and not a mine, and what little changes, like organic farming, they could have solved many problems. I fear that the digital world will win the game. The positive thing that has been understood is the importance of culture. We feed on art as well as food.
To date, what have been the immediate consequences of the spread of Covid-19 on your work for you and what do you think the long-term consequences could be??
I was supposed to open three exhibitions in this period, including one in Göttingen, and I would have gone to see the Monet exhibition in Potsdam which sleeps in the dark like the Raphael exhibition in Rome.
Nataly Maier (Munich, 1957) studies photography in Munich. In 1982 he moves to Milan, holds the first exhibition at the Attico di Fabio Sargentini gallery in Rome with his photo sculptures, dedicating himself to the two-dimensional overcoming of the photographic language. Throughout his journey, the way of proceeding through dual structures remains constant: in his diptychs he separates the image from its color. Today he uses the ancient technique of egg tempera for painting. He exhibits in numerous exhibitions in Germany, in Italy and abroad (in 2001 at the Roman Villa in Florence; in 2015 to the Antonio Calderara Foundation; in Vacciago and at the Soeffger Gallery in St. Pauls, Minnesota and at the Taylor Galleries in Dublin). Last year he received the Michetti Prize in Francavilla al Mare. He lives and works between Milan and Starnberg. Its reference galleries are: Antonella Cattani Contemporary Art, Bolzano; Artesilva, Seregno (MB); MEB Art Studio, Borgomanero (NO). An exhibition will open soon at Antonella Cattani contemporary in Bolzano, and the M.Ar.Co association will dedicate its third episode to the Royal Silversmiths at the Villa Reale in Monza. www.natalymaier.com