"With the aim of creating an environment capable of triggering the visitor's reflection and active participation, as well as giving emphasis to the feminine in art, the artist focuses his attention on the eternal question of the complex relationship of the woman with the man and with the power. To do this, Mastrovito creates a space-time short-circuit, freely inspired by stories which, although very distant in space and time, share the theme of sexual harassment: on the one hand, the biblical episode of Susanna and the Elders, one of the more ancient narratives on the subject; on the other, the controversial story of Ambra Battilana Gutierrez about the scandal of the so-called "bunga bunga" and the #MeToo movement. Drawing free inspiration from both stories, but also from the fairy tale of Daphne, who turned into a plant in order to escape Apollo's ardent love, whom she rejected, Very Bad Things outlines an ambiguous narrative, difficult to understand, in which the depicted characters are symbolic, unidentified and unidentifiable, and where the reality of the facts, despite the underlying violence, is hidden among the different reading levels to lead the visitor to reflect on the unfortunate recurrence of events of harassment on women and how, very often, it is difficult to prove the truth of the facts. For this reason, through a particular display solution, Mastrovito proposes the overlap between readable/unreadable, true/false, knowable/unknowable, to underline the dichotomy without solution between man's continuous attempt to know the truth and the extreme difficulty, if not the impossibility, of discerning it from the false in an age, ours, where the media accentuate this complexity through multiple fake news. Focal object of Very Bad Things investigation is therefore one of the most characteristic dramas of our time: the (im)possibility of a communication intended as a real instrument of information and knowledge on today's reality"
Ilaria Bernardi in Very Bad Things' press release