Mattia Biagi, “Rose Like a Phoenix from the Ashes”

Rose Like a Phoenix from the Ashes

Photograph: Courtesy Anna Kustera Gallery

After seeing Rose Like a Phoenix from the Ashes, one wonders why the Italian-born, L.A.-based Mattia Biagi bothered with the other pieces in his New York solo debut. The corroded frame of a 1954 Buick sedan, stationed in the main space of the gallery, has been coated with shiny black tar, gutted of its plush interior and transformed into a makeshift garden. An all-American symbol of middle-class comfort and mobility becomes a motionless ruin filled with a mound of soil nurturing an enormous ficus tree.

The title of the piece suggests a commentary on the potential of environmental renewal within the harsh conditions of industrialization. Biagi articulates his (optimistic) message through a reinterpretation of art-historical idioms. Clearly nodding to Earth art (reinserted into the white cube that it had notoriously abandoned), he also alludes to the critique of mass culture offered by the Italian arte povera movement (refashioned with American symbols). But paying his dues to Robert Smithson and Giuseppe Penone doesn’t stop Biagi from forging his own way. His juxtaposition of decay and growth, technology and obsolescence, monumentality and instability makes for a visually arresting installation.

Regrettably, the rest of the works don’t achieve the same level of visual or conceptual sophistication. While tar remains Biagi’s material of choice—encasing a teddy bear in Matilda and a resin apple in Big Apple—its use becomes too stylized. Design gets in the way of art, and the point gets mired.