Words by Steed Williamson 

If high gloss, hyper-real, part-emo, part-punk-type vixens are your thing you will be more than glad to be introduced to the work of Gianluca Mattia. To describe these character illustrations is one thing, but to see them is quite another. And make no mistake they must be seen to be appreciated in their full glory. But to put them into a few words, they are a little like pumped up computer-illustrated versions of the ‘Suicide Girls’, a modern pin-up genre. They operate in some of the same realms of beauty as the Suicide Girls, utilising details like tattoos, blood, tears, angel wings, piercings, band-aids, glossy rubber or PVC, open wounds, scars, hot rods, skulls, odd creatures and minimal amounts of clothing. While Mattia’s work can look ‘cute,’ it is also strangely challenging at the same time – where else can you see a ‘cutesy yet sexy’ character being sucked out by aliens or with slit wrists?

Ever since he first learned to hold a pencil, Gianluca Mattia – born in the city of Bari in the south of Italy in 1975 – had a burning desire to create. Partaking in formal art school training grew and fostered Mattia’s natural sketching skills and after he graduated from his city’s art school he attended a few private courses in computer graphics. Mattia qualified as a Master of Arts, an Architect’s Designer and also in Interior Decoration. While acknowledging that formal art training helped define his artistic work and its relationship with design, he’s also aware of the things it can’t teach: ‘I think the predisposition to manual design, to creativity, the desire to create – you don’t learn these kinds of things at school. It’s a kind of baggage you always have with you, it grows up with you.’

He’s learnt to travel with this ‘baggage’ well, his work studio spaces varying from ‘little studios under the stairs’ to big and comfortable ones. He describes his current space as ‘a tavern under a lodging I share with my girlfriend,’ but he doesn’t seem phased by the potential for flux. ‘Usually I like to have chaos all around me’, he confides, ‘I like to be surrounded by a bunch of things, action figures, comics, paintings, books, paper drafts, prints, cast models, dioramas and many other things. As I am working I like to move my aspect and find something on which to focus.’

He says his characters’ development comes from a search for newness: ‘Initially my concentration was on the representation of the female figure; I was searching for a personal style. Today, what I do is not simply ‘pin-up,’ they are undergoing an evolution, contaminated by new types of content and forms.’

The FULL interview with GIANLUCA MATTIA appears in issue 5 of Mynameis? magazine - click here to purchase your copy www.graphotism.com/Subscribe-Graphotism-or-MyNameIs-Magazine.74.0.html