"Bent Fire" Painting

Mattia Paoli (b. 1991) is an Italian artist based in Florence. His practice moves between painting, photography, and digital experimentation, exploring the tension between physical matter and its visual translation. Trained in Design at the University of Florence, his background informs an approach where artistic intuition and structural thinking coexist. Paoli’s work investigates transformation, instability, and the transient nature of form through layered surfaces, material contrasts, and hybrid techniques. Traditional media intersect with 3D design and digital processes, generating images and objects that oscillate between the real and the constructed, the organic and the artificial. Alongside his artistic practice, he is a university lecturer in visual communication, photography, and digital design, a role that reinforces his research-driven and experimental approach. His works have been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, and are held in private collections worldwide. Paoli’s research does not aim to represent reality, but to question it using the image as a site of tension, mutation, and visual negotiation.