About

About

Statement

I am an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, video, drawing, objects, algorithms, mechanical devices and custom software. I live and work between Berlin and Rovereto.

As a child I went into the wood in front of my house, to see, or perhaps to feel, what was on the other side. I found a low wall. Behind the wall, more woods. I did not become an artist. I recognised it: what looked like a beginning was a return.

My work begins from subtraction: I remove something from a situation to see what remains. The ball from a football match. The subject from a portrait. The audience from a museum. What appears in the gap is what interests me. I call these moments suspensions. Often the result is a paradox: a portrait of myself made entirely of other people’s faces, a real hand that imitates an artificial one, a camera that photographs its own fall.

I work with archives, family photographs, personal documents, collective memories, not to preserve them but to reopen them. In many projects people become co-authors without knowing it. I set up conditions, then step back. The event takes over.

Bio

Matteo Peterlini was born in Rovereto in 1970. He studied information technology and graphic design, and worked as an art director.

In the 1990s he performed in Hate Italy with GX Jupitter-Larsen (The Haters), and was active in Italy’s countercultural networks. He collaborated with the international Mail Art network and created the archival project  The Dreams.

The Haters, Hate Italy, 1993
Video, C.S.A. Clinamen, Rovereto

From 2001 he developed a practice in conceptual and relational photography. Works such as 2amici and Doppiamano were shown at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice. In 2003 he founded the iotualtro (meyouother) ID photo archive, a web project on identity included in the Rhizome archive at New Museum, New York.

In 2004, V6 was exhibited at MART, Trento and Rovereto. In 2007, Backscape was shown at Casa del Mantegna, Mantova, and published in Passages. Dialogues with the Dark (Ed. Mimesis). In 2008 Backscape was shown in the European Month of Photography in Berlin, Bratislava, Paris, Vienna, Luxembourg and Rome.

After relocating to Berlin, he initiated Missing, Vermisst, Scomparso (2012), included in the Agency of Unrealized Projects and shown at daadgalerie, Berlin, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. Between 2018 and 2023 he developed the Trilogy of the Sign: Signature/Unterschrift/Firma, Relatiografia, and Self. In 2021 Bythology was presented at Schloss Burgscheidungen, Halle. In 2022 and 2023 he worked on the Timecapsule series. In 2024 he was in residence at Viafarini, Milan, for the Missing Museum project.

In 2024 and 2025, supported by Fondazione Caritro and promoted by Fondazione Museo Civico di Rovereto, he developed Sono tranquillo, altrettanto siatelo voi, a public art installation and historical research project dedicated to Ezio Setti, a political deportee who died at Mauthausen in 1944. Peterlini is Setti’s great-grandnephew. The project includes a site-specific installation at the train station in Rovereto and an exhibition at the Museo della Città, extended through May 2026.

Selected Exhibitions

Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venezia; MAXXI, Roma; MART Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto; Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea di Trento; daadgalerie, Berlin; Unbuilt Roads, New York; Casa del Mantegna, Mantova; European Month of Photography Berlinische Galerie, Berlin – Bast’Art, Bratislava – Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris – Museum auf Abruf, Vienna – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg – Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome. Yunnan Arts Institute YanBoTing, Kunming, Cina; Kopfbau, Art Basel, Basel.

Contact

matteo.peterlini(-at-)gmail.com

CV

Curriculum Vitae

Links