Los Angeles-based Mattia Casalegno (b. 1981, Naples) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work moves between live-media performance, installations, computer-generated imagery, sculpture, and horticulture. With a multidisciplinary approach facilitated by his research-based practice, Casalegno investigates the relationship between new technologies, the objects we create, our subjectivities, and the modes in which these constructs come together. He combines the conceptual framework of each project with the exploration of unusual materials and technologies such as glycerine soap, thermoplastics, living tissue, and electro-encephalographic interfaces. Most recently Casalegno has been applying real-time video chat sites to rainforest plants used in the synthesis of corticosteroids, LED grow lights and strange padded furniture.
Casalegno has exhibited at festivals and museums internationally, including AxS Festival, Pasadena, US, 2014; Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, TW, 2013; Wright Gallery, Los Angeles, US, 2011; LACMA, Los Angeles, US, 2010; MADRE and MACRO, Rome, IT, 2010; Rome Fashion Week, IT, 2010; Le Cube - Contemporary Art Museum, Paris, FR, 2008; Cimatics festival and Nuit Blanche, Brussels, BE, 2007; Optronica, BFI, London, UK, 2007; AVIT, Essen, DE, 2006; Mutek Festival, Montreal, CA, 2005; and OFFF, Barcelona, ES. He has collaborated with some of the most renowned designers and artists in fashion and contemporary art including, Sonia Rykiel, J.P. Gaultier, R. Capucci, Lita Albuquerque, P. Monti, FENDI, amongst others. His works have been featured internationally in publications and catalogues including A Touch of Code, Gestalten Books, 2011; New Media Design, Sometti, 2008; and Deleuze and Audiovisual Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2007. Casalegno has an MA in Communication Studies from La Sapienza University in Rome, and an MFA in Design and Media Arts from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He has taught at UCLA and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, US. Casalegno was nominated for the New Technological Art Awards in 2014.
