biography
Are you really interested to see my face, to know who I am, what I did and did not, when, where, what are my successes and my failures? Well, I tried to list hereafter some biographical references, aware that a person cannot be told. And since there are no words for telling what is deep inside, we use art, any possible form of it. First of it all I should confess it is the first time that I live (as far as I know or remember) and I have been improvising as human being since the day I came into the world.
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Massimo Riccetti (Macerata 28 September 1972), after graduation with a thesis on Narcissism and Totalitarianism, deepens his studies on the "solipsistic drama", both from a psychological, philosophical and artistic point of view, as a painter, musician and composer, video maker, author of writings and theater director, always using in his works a transversal and hybrid language and keeping in mind his very nature of Unprofessional Human Being.
Between 1999 and 2000 he was committed, as author and director, to the making of the theatrical performance Digestione (Digestion), together with David Quintili and Elisabetta Calabrese (Petite Maison des Sons et Lumière). At the end of 2000 he moved to Berlin to continue his studies on the isolation and deformation of the reality of solipsism and edo-masochism.
In 2002, back in Italy, he collaborated on the theatrical performance "Circo Locutivo" with Enrico Sbaffi and Lara Lucaccioni, as the author of the soundtrack. In the same year he is the creator of the project "Intus et in cute" and author of music and text’s adaptation of the audio-visual installation "Levitico" with David Quintili and Lisa Calabrese.
Between 2003 and 2008 he kept on searching for "a meaning", from Turkey to the USA, from the UK to Morocco, from Portugal to Poland, from Cuba to Bulgaria, from Thayland to Vietnam.
Since 2007 he has been working on video-art works together with Enza Scarangella (Mostefprod), also taking care of the soundtracks. In December 2007 he began to work on the “Lebensverkleidung - Travestimento della vita” (Disguise of life) project with Francesca Rossi Brunori (Ecate Teatro), Gabriella Ciarlantini (Benandanti) and Enza Scarangella, as author of the script and as director of both videos and theatrical piece.
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In December 2009 he took part in the dance theater project Being/Stati by Maurizio Rinaldelli Uncinetti, dedicating to the video section. In the same year together with Enza Scarangella he was awarded by D'Ars Oscar Signorini Foundation and by the Contemporary Music Center of Milan at the "Oscar Signorini 2009 - XXVI Edition Prize”, dedicated to experimental music videos, for the opera "Ab und Zu ".
In 1992 he founded the Nylon (post-new wave band), carrying on the concert activity until 1997 (the year the group disbanded), since then he began to compose and play on his own, crossing over from the new wave to contemporary music.
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In 1998 he began his collaboration with David Quintili (Nuovi Linguaggi - Ecate Teatro) for a new project merging poetry, sound system and performance, in an attempt to bring the former back to a less intellectual and sophisticated dimension and at the same time proposing an alternative way of listening, which instead it is enriched with new activating stimuli. Through the use of contrast and contradiction as means of meta-communication (the communication transcending itself and changing as soon as it takes shape), he seeks a paradoxical, minimal, provocative, but also extremely intimate language.
Since 2005 he has been devoting himself to painting, using mixed techniques on canvas or wood, preferring acrylic colors and stucco. He paints with a spontaneous and impatient gesture, transferring the graphic translation of his unconscious emotions to the canvas, before it dries, before it becomes aware.
He depicts an archetypal world, where Chaos tries to give an order to itself, and where the order is chaotic and asymmetrical, the color is dirty, the view is confused, but also where in the end everything finds its space and fits (unwillingly) with the rest. His work is summed up in the absolute imperfection of a vital gesture, in the finite and perfect two-dimension’s limit of painting, to which matter and color, imperfect and infinite, are opposed.
From 2008 to 2011 he realized video-art works, taking part of contemporary music and video-art reviews including "Itinerari d’ascolto", "Musicarte", "Manent".
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In 2018, during the vernissage of his paintings personal exhibition, he arranged the audio installation and performance “Una parola per tutti, un pensiero per pochi, un corpo per nessuno” (A word for all, a thought for a few, a body for no one) with David Quintili, using his own writings and music.
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His music was used as the soundtrack of Paramorfosi, a contemporary theatre-dance piece producted by EAD Company, staged between 2021 and 2022 in Catania (Società Storica Catanese) and Macerata (Palazzo Buonaccorsi).
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Now he is living in his hometown Macerata (Italy), keeping on painting in the basement and composing in his tiny room.