Voices: Niccolò Fano, Matèria, Rome
Niccolò Fano
Niccolò Fano, is the owner and founder of Matèria, located in Rome, Italy.
Niccolò Fano
Tell us about a mentor you had early on in your career and what they taught you.
I had the pleasure of working for Artist and Professor Karen Knorr as her project/studio manager in London after completing my MA. Without her trust and the experience gained through her generosity, it would have been very hard for me find the courage to open a gallery in my late twenties. After a decade of working with Karen, I still believe her approach towards dealing with galleries and structuring her overall practice, to be a perfect case study for Artists currently looking to work internationally. I am lucky to have witnessed first hand how an Artist can perfect long term and reciprocally rewarding collaborations with galleries worldwide by nurturing honest, personal and lasting connections that extend beyond the art market dynamics.
Name a big overall lesson you've learned in running a gallery.
Learning to be patient. My gallery model relies on a long term vision and a comprehensive coverage of production costs for its represented artists, requiring careful planning of the gallery exhibition program and its allocated budget. Moreover I have come to learn that fully catering for a selected number of artists prevents me from working on all the projects I would like to, yet it allows me to give the artists I work with the chance to rarely compromise through a carte blanche approach in the gallery and a tailored international art fair program often focused on solo presentations.
What are you busy working on right now?
We are currently looking to expand our program outside the physical restrictions of the gallery space in order to further the circulation of ideas and nuanced discussions regarding contemporary topics within the fields of art and culture. The next project in the gallery is set to be entirely audio-based featuring a public program of early morning and late night extended conversations. We are working on the finer details and looking to late March for the launch.
Installation view Marta Mancini, La molla, 2018. Courtesy of Materia. Photo Roberto Apa.
What does success as a gallery director mean to you?
After four years of running Matèria, my interest in a specific set of questions relating to the cornerstone of artistic practice - and my own as a dealer - has started to become increasingly relevant to the way I approach the structural decisions at the gallery. The answers to these questions - which are painfully basic on the surface - exemplify a glaring paradox within our current sector, systemically applying across the board to all of the professional profiles operating within it.
On the surface the comically elementary questions of why/what? - to be understood as an expression of purpose (eg. Why become an artist and what do you want to achieve?) - should be answered with ease and comfort, independently from the motivations provided; yet the why?/what? are a questions that are currently addressed with unease - if not bypassed altogether - within a sector or scene that has been driven exponentially (engulfed, much like most creative market segments) by online clout and the necessity for artists, galleries and curators to appeal and appease a developing digital market centred on the immediacy of aesthetics. The glaring paradox lies in the exponential online expansion of the global arts community without the relinquishing of an operating structure based on tight networks that have ossified due to the glaring scarcity of means and low levels of competence required to enter the sector; proving erroneous the initial prediction of the internet as the liberating tool to democratise the market and provide wider avenues within the arts.
Whilst the upside of why?/what? - Why set up a gallery and what are the objectives? - can be seen as scalable for gallerists despite the current dire climate faced by small and mid-sized commercial spaces; for artists in particular this is far from being the case. If 90% (a generous estimate) of artists, are relegated to a life of economic instability from relying exclusively on their practice and ability to form networks, then our understanding of the term success - if we are invested in a better system - must inevitably take into consideration the nuanced, wider spectrum of the term, alongside the underrepresented answers to the questions of why?/what? that might usher an alternative set of paradigms towards the creation of a better operating system in which the metrics of value are far more geared towards ideas and innovation.
If indeed the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is so elusive, then the current amplified tendency to place the pleasure of the eye over the pleasure of the mind, seems not only fundamentally counterproductive, but also the perfect way to solidify an adverse status quo. Moreover, when material gains and visibility become the objective, the work produced and the exhibitions held are the ones to ultimately suffer from the tendency to adapt meaning to a packaged trend or aesthetic exercise, rather than ensuring the emergence of artistic production from ideas, failure and a genuine interest in the social, cultural and political landscape. Such approach further exacerbates the flimsy relationship of trust placed in the value of art within the wider market that has always grappled with a sector structured around subjectivity rather than an objective measure of worth.
Installation view Stefano Canto - Sotto l'influenza del Fiume. Sedimento, 2018. Courtesy of Matèria. Photo Roberto Apa.jpg
What is your favorite thing about your gallery space?
Our unusual space, characterised by two very different and challenging exhibition rooms, separated by an semi-open air courtyard. The San Lorenzo neighbourhood where the space is located is one of the most interesting and dynamic areas in Rome, where a rich artistic legacy coexists with a tight knit community of artisans, small business owners, university students and a wide array of budding creative ventures.
What does the art world need more? Less of?
A heavier focus on ideas and research, less on aesthetics. A healthy combination of the two - where the aesthetic qualities are the organic result of the ideas explored - would be a desirable outcome.
Tell us about one artwork you love living with and why.
I recently moved into a new house and have been living with a single artwork on the walls whilst the rest of my small collection is in storage. I currently only collect my own gallery artists and this particular work - Giuseppe De Mattia's Dust collector (Rome #4) - is my first personal acquisition marking the start of the gallery relationship with the Artist.
Installation view André Mendes - Ainda não, 2019. Courtesy of Matèria. Photo Roberto Apa.jpg