Mateo Maté

Timeless Landscapes

26 Jun - 12 Sep 2025

Reality has progressively transformed into the wasteland of relativity; absolute certainties are increasingly scarce, and in this murky terrain, civil society has so far opted to take shelter while, in the background, the sound of dreaded war drums can be heard. In Timeless Landscapes, Mateo Maté proposes a line of work focused on exploring the terrain of deception, the duplicity staged in public life, and how its effects extend into private spheres. In recent years, the artist has developed an artistic practice grounded in a dual reinterpretation: on one hand, he reimagines 19th-century artworks; on the other, he appropriates military uniforms used in armed conflicts around the globe, using them as raw material to recreate those classical landscapes. The result is a solemn representation built from a rich variety of camouflage patterns, reminding us that in today’s world, almost nothing is what it seems. While the masses continue their journey through the desert—exhausted by the struggle that survival has once again become, still addicted to obtaining the means to acquire as many consumer goods as possible, chasing a deceptive happiness that paradoxically recedes the harder one strives for it—Lipovetsky had already warned that our society runs on hyperconsumption, not on “de-consumption.” This is the outcome of the post-Fordist system, established through profound shifts in how demand is stimulated, how products are sold, and how consumer behavior and imagination are shaped. These transformations are part of an economic dynamic that began in the late 19th century, aligned with the broader current of the individualist civilization of happiness. Today, industries and services apply choice-based logics, personalize products and pricing strategies, and large-scale retailers adopt differentiation and segmentation policies—many of which mimic military strategy, now applied to economics. Yet all these changes serve only to further commercialize ways of life, feed the frenzy of needs, and tighten the logic of “always more, always new.” War has historically been viewed as the ultimate stimulus for economic growth—a powerful machine that generates wealth through arms production while sowing destruction that later necessitates reconstruction. Global powers deliberately keep the flame of conflict alive, igniting timely disputes they seek to justify before the global public as reasons for military intervention. The manipulation of language—the altering of word meanings to tell stories aligned with specific interests—enables the capitalization of populist rhetoric. The events that shape international reality, as reported by mass media, are not random accumulations of objective facts; they are the result of narratives carefully constructed by communication experts from the world’s most powerful governments, often in partnership with major cinematic fiction factories. It is wise, then, to remain skeptical—our senses often deceive us. A vast, powerful meaning-making machine works tirelessly to construct narratives in which millions of people invest their hopes, shaping discourses that magnetize our will. Mateo Maté constructs his own storytelling around us, conjuring a mirage that gently captures the gaze while inviting us not to settle for a first impression. He urges us to look again—to see exactly how the landscape of the real is constructed, as a symptom of the social and economic context of our time. The territory becomes the principal raw material for generating wealth, whether through direct exploitation of its resources or through appropriation of its symbolic values—offering promises of specific qualities that turn out to be trompe-l'œils. Timeless Landscapes presents idealized images of nature, landscapes that once adorned palaces and noble homes, evoking that permanent place of desire, like time capsules from the past. The artist engages with the power of images to suggest, and with the global manipulation that operates through visual storytelling. The abstract desire contained in the idea of nature and landscape is ultimately commodified, as the system endlessly colonizes and commercializes our desires. It’s impossible not to consider how the implementation of industrial production processes and infrastructure is directly linked to environmental degradation and the reshaping of territory. Yet it seems the real danger lies not in their existence, but in how they are used. The production and consumption of goods and services exist in constant tension between improving business performance and ensuring market competitiveness. While we might believe that individuals have the power to choose and influence consumption trends, it’s clear that in our context, a lack of education in valuing and respecting the natural environment—fueled by decades of omission in the educational system—has shaped a collective consciousness driven by advertising stimuli aimed solely at consumption. The consequences of this transformation process impact both the environment and human life, directly and indirectly. In this spiral, it is crucial to highlight the superfluous nature of many needs generated by the post-industrial economy, whose primary goal is its own survival. Consumer culture has commodified everyday life to such a degree that it has emptied basic social habits of genuine meaning, privileging having and appearing over being—lives more performed than truly lived. In the face of these forces and interests, both personal and collective questioning becomes essential in developing critical capacities that might rescue us from decades of banality. Art, of course, does not possess the instrumental power to reverse the situations described. Its role is not to resolve conflicts. Still, some artists take on the challenge of addressing them, helping define the role of certain creators as symbolic mediators within society. The great revolution now unfolding—or that is yet to come—will occur on emotional and personal levels of understanding. It is a person-to-person revolution, and thus, stimuli and narratives that activate these spheres of human reflection are more necessary than ever. Non-monolithic ideas and open-ended expressions of thought are like dew—absorbed gently by the natural species they touch. The unveiling performed by Mateo Maté cannot reverse the destructive flows that underpin the global war economy, nor can it take on the power centers where political strategies are crafted and legitimized—strategies that end up shaping the limits of many aspects of our lives. But pointing to the murky dynamics of exploitation—so normalized by their ubiquity—is a way to bring unregulated topics into public discourse. The construction of narrative itself has become the new-old battlefield where the struggle for social communication takes place, with all its potential rooted in civil and creative agency, aimed at planting the seeds of new ideas.