An exploration of Umberto Chiodi’s forest involves the human senses, paving the way for us to plunge into the – only apparent – tranquillity of his drawings, into a familiarity of two-dimensional forms that is negated by a gradual swarming undercurrent. This dense concentration of signs obliges us stop and dwell on this work, to decipher it and compare it with our own visual and perceptive experiences: this is a relentless study that emanates from the artist and passes to the observer, who finds himself expected to question the physical properties of the organisms that inhabit the papers. Silent animations of phyto-zoomorphic elements fluctuate in an unstable equilibrium, almost as though they are immune to gravity and direction.

Yet what we deduce from these drawings, which evidently facilitate the mutation of the synthesis of figurative tradition in the light of something new to be interpreted, is that every decorative purpose has been overcome in the artist’s striving towards a symbolic aim that he clearly has in mind.

The animal and vegetable kingdom, so articulated yet so contained, seems to be poised to discern a breach in the borders established by the paper and its frame. The space at the MACT is itself the limit that contains this formless flow, ever ready to give way and overflow. Chiodi’s meticulous action is a dyke that prepares us to ponder the cyclic nature of the time we spend here on this earth.

Even the dimensions of the object, a selection of things discarded from everyday use, are not extraneous to Chiodi’s dynamics. They constitute what has become an indelible reflection on the world we inhabit: the experience that comes full circle in human actions.

This exhibitions shows a selection of five cycles of works, dating from 2023 to the present day, some of them drawings in a variety of formats (coloured crayons, Ecoline colours, tempera on paper and cotton) and assembles. The drawings and assemblies are accompanied by graffito and coloured crayon works made directly on the walls.

Mattia Desogus, Monza, 2026.
Translated by Pete Kercher

Ph. Umberto Chiodi, Milan.