Biography

Paolo Mezzadri: born in 1966, in Cremona.

In 2010, after a long working experience in the family business, he decided to take a different, more creative road and opened MyLab Design first, and then Metallifilati. As the name suggests, the dream was to create, experience, and share emotions starting from the simplicity of the gesture. The gesture of a mental (and not only mental) laboratory, where you can try, experiment, encounter, and cross concrete elements with totally visionary ones. He took part in Euroflora and the Genoa Boat Show with furnishes and accessories, and in MACEF, Milan Design Week, and the Milan Home Garden Fair with a variety of creations.

He created the bookmark for the IMPREGILO Group for their presentation of Milan’s new outer ring road. In February 2012, he showcased his creations at Arte Cremona, in 2013, at Arte Piacenza, and recently at Arte Accessibile in Milan.

He collaborated with the municipality of Paratico, and his “Jugglers” now decorate the lovely lakefront. In November 2014, he opened his first solo exhibition at the San Domenico Foundation premises in Crema.

From 1 May to 18 October 2015, he will be at the Summer Art exhibition at JW Marriott Venice Resort & Spa, Isola delle Rose, in St Mark’s lagoon in Venice – Progetto Venezia 2015: Sculture nel Parco (Sculptures in the Park) collective exhibition.

Paolo Mezzadri will also showcase some of his works at the 8th Soncino Biennale from 29 August to 20 September 2015.
His works are on display permanently at an old spinning mill in Soresina (near Cremona).

Review

Iron is where it all began. His beginnings, his personal and artistic achievements. Strength is the point of arrival. In between, there are bent, twisted, cut, concave, convex, smooth or rusty shapes. Paolo Mezzadri is attracted by “nature’s mistake”, as Italian poet Eugenio Montale used to call it. By that link that doesn’t hold and lets you go beyond matter and discover what it holds for itself and reveals only to the most attentive and curious.

To those who are not afraid of revelations. Letters. It’s easy to call them just letters and to think of them simply as part of a communication code. Who said that the letters of the alphabet always know what to say? Sometimes, the letters of the alphabet can get tangled up within ourselves, in our minds, in our hearts. They want to say something, but they can’t, because what we have inside is so urgent, that it needs to come out all at once. There’s no time for the letters to get written or write themselves down.

Paolo Mezzadri’s letters are often free falling or tangled up. Or even inscribed on cubes assembled in an installation that talks about exams, that feeling of being always examined, and to refuse that inhumane game called “who’s the best”. That’s when the shouting starts. When you’ve had enough of something, you start shouting everything you have inside through a megaphone. The scream builds up and changes shape, or rather, it becomes a shape, twisted, bent by the impact. The pain becomes solid. The voice turns into iron and bends with the same force of a punch right in the stomach. To be heard, the scream needs to be seen first.

It needs to become tactile. It has to hurt, become physical, turn into matter. Then, at last, it can be heard, in a paradoxical synaesthetic experience. It’s only when the scream is seen and heard at the same time, giving vent to all its physicality, that all the urgency gives way to sedimentation, sharp irony, and the gentle sarcasm of the climbing little men. Human figures that laboriously try to stand up and walk on a surface that seems to keep hold of them. These figures are the reflection of what we are, screaming apart. Traps trapped in a society that puts us constantly under examination.

A society that wants us to climb higher and higher, and reduces us to fragile shapeless figures in the magma of our own prejudice. Ironically lightweight in our climb, and just as ironically in an unstable balance in our imminent, disastrous fall. A disillusioned gaze on reality, on our frantic faffing about, which doesn’t allow us to live the present, caught as we are in the anxiety for the future. An ironic, yet benevolent gaze on that tiny little beings that are humans, for whom Mezzadri has the greatest, boundless love.

Donatella Migliore

I met a raggedy man, by chance, by fate, or because it was the right time. I spotted him around town. He had a broad smile and a coffee in his hand.
These are such happy times that I can’t even find the time to breathe. Perhaps it’s the same man who, as a child, was shaken by the wind and by the endless desire to do all those things that shouldn’t be done. Let’s get things straight, not a rascal… not too naughty at least.
All he wanted to do was hug the letters and smell the fragrance of the sand. Then, once the rain stopped, he would find endless seas and pirate ships in every puddle. Wow! We are all born raggedy. Now I know.

I scream. I travel. I couldn’t do anything else. I don’t know any other way. I hate this way of doing things, of travelling, to get rid of an unbearable weight. A journey doesn’t solve anything. All it does is move empty boxes. So incredibly unique to fill and discover, but absurd when you seal them with thousands of rounds of twine, which make everything appear as an endless cobweb.

You made me get used to this state, to this damned feeling of always being somewhere else. I don’t want to be somewhere else. I don’t care.
Any journey can be the right one, none the perfect one. Somehow, I’m with you. Sometimes, I accompany you. I don’t participate. I can’t. Perhaps I don’t even want to. I should stop, but I can’t find the courage. I don’t have enough breath. It takes a lot of breath, even to stop. It takes courage to hit the brakes. Many times, hitting the brakes means changing gears. Most of the time, when we drive in high gears, the ones that somehow have quickly displaced thoughts and actions, we aren’t able to do so. Gears can increase speed, but they need to be understood… felt… otherwise what the heck are they for?

So, as I was saying, when you hit the brakes, your stomach gets catapulted into your throat, and you choke. Perhaps I can’t find the time to do it. I do realise that this could be a limit of yours. Yes, exactly. Because you don’t want to stop either. We don’t want to. We wouldn’t have any excuses, anyway. It’s been a lifetime since you’ve been travelling, and you still don’t know any other ways to live. You’re just so eager to travel. Sometimes, you are in abstinence. That’s the feeling you give me. Never, ever stop. Sometimes, journeys can bore you to death, but it’s always better than nothing at all.
Looking at oneself can be scary; however, somewhere inside of us, I feel… I feel that it helps. It could help. It could actually help. That would be wonderful. I can picture the moment when sweaty, tired, and loaded with useless weight, we stop, breathe, and take a break. Breathe… take a break. In that very moment, everything moves, everything is in motion… everything.

It’s no longer the same, and we can feel it, understand it. We were expecting it. Then you turn around and exclaim: enough! That’s it. Enough. Tell me more. Let’s tell each other everything, absolutely everything, what we are… and nothing else.

As if it were the first day of primary school when all you have to do is answer the roll call. To that lady, who is not your mother, and will repeat your name many other times.
You take me away. You take me away with you. I would like to come as I am, with that lightness that, most of the times, doesn’t want me and doesn’t recognise me. Come on, let’s do it. For us. Let’s stop. We will have our dues to pay, but we’ll think about it later.

In any case, we have learned that there is always a price to pay, which, at the very least, will be quite high.
Without claiming to have understood everything, just with the awe for finally catching a glimpse of something distant. Something that is just ours. Beautiful. Silent.
Something that tastes of us and smells of our fears. Something that tastes of desire. Again, no, better still, that tastes of a surprising discovery.
Let’s let loose of our fears. Let’s throw everything away.

I would do that for you. I would do that for me. I would do that.
And one day we will, you know?
I try to love you in the silence of my thoughts. Sometimes, I even believe I can make it. Yes, I feel you are even closer than that solitary shadow, which, right now, accompanies my thoughts.
I like this feeling. It’s very reassuring.

… I’ve been stacking up thoughts… for many years, I have found myself with empty rooms full of thoughts, projects, failures, and even a few disappointments
Today I’ve stacked up thoughts that have become objects in a full room…
It’s a nice feeling. The room is big, very big… with high walls… soon they will be white…
I was waiting for you…
Hello home.