How It Becomes You
Exhibition information
How It Becomes You It is a visual investigation into the process of transformation that occurs when reality stops being observed from a distance and is instead absorbed, assimilated, and lived through the body.
The works shift between emotional states rather than following fixed narratives. They explore fear, wonder, and vulnerability as transient conditions that shape identity, rather than define it. They also address the dream state, where control over thought dissolves and images, sensations, and memories emerge freely, in no apparent order. In this diffused space between dream and waking, perception shifts and what feels external and internal begin to overlap. Each painting acts as a fragment of experience, something partly recognised and partly distorted, where reality is not represented but confronted and internalised.
The exhibition includes a subtle sense of awakening: a moment when what you experience ceases to be separate from who you are, and your own reality becomes inseparable from that which has entered it.
It is not a story about who we are, but about what happens to us as we are becoming who we will be. The images contain a tension between the external world and the internal response, a space where perception dissolves and emotion transforms into physical matter.
In this territory, nothing remains stable. Everything is in transition. And the question is not what you see, but how that becomes part of you.
Artist's biography
Martina De Matteo She is an artist based in Ibiza who mainly works with acrylic and oil on canvas.
His paintings translate the sensations, contrasts, and stimuli of life into bold compositions, distorted figures, and vibrant colours. Drawing inspiration from Neapolitan folklore and the diverse cultural environments he has experienced internationally, his work develops a personal symbolic language in which tradition and contemporaneity coexist, fragility meets strength, and reality is continually transformed and reimagined.
