MATHEW McWILLIAMS | Things As They Are

MATHEW McWILLIAMS
Things As They Are. A Dialogue with Antiveduto Gramatica
Nuova Galleria Morone, March 26 – May 29, 2026

Mathew McWilliams' practice unfolds as a silent and rigorous investigation into the mechanisms of vision and image construction. Painting, drawing, and photography are not distinct fields, but interconnected devices through which the artist tests the very conditions of painterly creation. For his first exhibition at Nuova Galleria Morone, McWilliams engages in a direct confrontation with Antiveduto Gramatica's Concerto a quattro figure (1608–1610). This dialogue is not a mere citation or reinterpretation, but a genuine analytical process: the seventeenth-century work is observed, deconstructed, and traversed to identify its deep structures.

The catalog Things As They Are serves as a space for reading and exploring this process. More than just a documentary apparatus, the volume guides the reader through the artist's working method, articulating the dialogue with Antiveduto Gramatica through visual materials, analyses, and critical contributions.

The opening is dedicated to the seventeenth-century painting, presented on a fold-out page that conveys its compositional complexity, accompanied by a section on colored paper that isolates and contextualizes its elements. The use of chromatic fields — orange and blue — immediately introduces one of the project's core conceptual nuclei: the relationship between image and negative, between presence and inversion.

Roberto Lacarbonara's critical text, structured in three movements, explores McWilliams' work starting from the notion of composition, then delving into the processes of extraction and abstraction, finally questioning the relationship between image and representation. This central contribution does not merely interpret the works but reflects their internal logic, highlighting the methodical and almost "retroactive" nature of the artist's practice.

The result is a precise and calibrated volume, in which every element — from the sequence of sections to the choice of materials — contributes to conveying the complexity of a research that constantly questions the notions of origin, copy, and transformation. A catalog that does not merely recount an exhibition but extends its thought, inviting the reader to, in turn, question the conditions through which we see and recognize images: things as they are.

Internal print on 120 gsm Art Natural uncoated paper.
Cover with staggered quarto print on 250 gsm Arena Extra White smooth paper.
Inserts on 120 gsm Materica terra rossa paper.

Language: Italian / English
Dimensions: 210 × 297 mm
Pages: 30
Binding: Singer saddle stitch

ISBN: 9791281457218

Graphic design: SV3 Studio, Milan

Publication date: March 2026

Publisher: Poliartes Edizioni for Nuova Galleria Morone