mattia biagi - black tar

"Mattia Biagi’s work, such as the “Tar Teddy Bears,” causes a vivid and extreme visual impact.
Biagi’s idea of the TAR collection was born during a visit to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Entranced by the texture of the mysterious tar bubbling up from the ground, he dipped his shoe into the tar and saw the juxtaposition of ancient and modern life in a moment of epiphany. Biagi’s TAR Collection transforms the familiar into the surreal. Each object is immersed in a special mixture of tar that Biagi has formulated in his studio. Every object reacts in a different way, thus he developed a special technique to immerse them in tar, creating various layers but maintaining the original shape. In order to contain the movement of the odiferous tar, Biagi then uses a specially formulated glaze. The darkness that covers these iconic objects immortalizes and connects them to a unique concept of aesthetic beauty.
“The TAR Collection” began with Biagi’s childhood love of dipping cookies into milk and has grown to the grim 21st century political impact that oil has on our everyday lives…
Biagi uses common objects and covers them in tar to both preserve them and to destroy them …just as we are doing with our planet. We strive to protect, but in fact we destroy."

http://www.mattiabiagi.com/info.html