In the ’70s Andrea Anastasio (Rome, 1961) is a member of MTM and is trained in street performance at the school of circus with Roy Bosier and Jango Edwards. He studies art history and oriental studies in Rome and at I.S.M.E.O.. Later he obtains his M.A.in philosophy in Venice. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s he travels extensively in India, studying Indian art history and philosophy. He works at the cataloguing of Islamic architecture in India for UNESCO and at the publication of the teaching of J. Krishnamurti at the K.F.I. Foundation in Madras. In the same years he collaborates with UDRI in Bombay and with the architectural firm Rahul Mehrotra & Associates-Bombay. He works at identifying and cataloguing craft and building techniques in the rural areas of India.

He designs for Italian companies such as Artemide, Memphis-Milan and Danese, connoting his projects of hybridizations of the industrial production processes with craft procedures and by the use of hand made materials that are then industrially finished. Since 2002 his work focuses on manipulating objects and materials of domestic usage and consumer-goods. By reiterating simple gestures or craft techniques like assemblage, weaving, collage, etc. or just by juxtaposing objects, underlining gestures and aspects of daily life that normally go unnoticed, Anastasio’s work generates linguistic short-circuits that challenge the common perception and definition of reality. By the making of objects, pictures, drawings, books and videos, his research focuses on temporality, fragility of human condition, on the definition of reality. He approaches domestic space as the privileged stage where the contradictions of human existence can be evoked and re-enacted.

Andrea Anastasio’s works here presented have been conceived exclusively for the gallery within its territorial survey aimed at identifying Roman authors operating in contemporary design with an international attitude combined with a deeply rooted cultural vocation to the genius loci and whose direction of research leads them to exploit techniques and materials of the Roman and Italian artistic and artisanal tradition.