Matilde Sambo / Davide La Montagna – Such a Fever: I Can’t Stop Living / Che febbre: non riesco a smettere di vivere

Comunicato stampa

Opening on 4 September, Such a Fever: I Can't Stop Living / Che febbre: non riesco a smettere di vivere inaugurates Joystick's new exhibition season, bringing together, for the first time, the practices of Matilde Sambo (Venice, Italy, 1993) and Davide La Montagna (Rivoli, Italy, 1992). Curated by Mara Sartore, the exhibition explores the shared territory between two distinct artistic voices, united by a profound attention to fragility, memory and the subtle ways in which materials can carry emotional experience.

Rather than constructing a dialogue through formal affinities, the project originates from a common emotional landscape. Both artists work with fragile presences, suspended narratives and ordinary materials capable of carrying memory, affection and vulnerability. Their works rarely impose themselves on the viewer; instead, they ask for a slower form of attention, where what appears almost imperceptible becomes the centre of experience.

The exhibition unfolds as a landscape rather than a sequence of individual works. Drawings emerge from wood and graphite like botanical apparitions; small sculptural interventions, handwritten texts and sound compositions inhabit the space with equal importance. During the opening, Davide La Montagna's poems will be activated through a live reading accompanied by a sound composition by Matilde Sambo, leaving behind an acoustic trace that will continue to inhabit the exhibition throughout its duration.
Rather than offering a narrative, the exhibition invites visitors into a condition: a place where intimacy becomes spatial, language becomes material and every gesture exists with what one of the exhibition's working texts describes as "delicate caution”.