Giuseppe Mastromatteo

Giuseppe Mastromatteo has been working as an artist for more than a decade. After a period spent as a recordist assistant inside a record company, Mastromatteo graduated from Accademia di Comunicazione di Milano with a degree in art direction. He writes about art, teaches advertising at various significant academic institutes, and collaborates with the Triennale Museum of Milan in the role of art director. Since 2005, Mastromatteo’s works have been exhibited at the Fabbrica Eos Art Gallery Milan, Emmanuel Fremin Gallery in New York, Paris, Miami, Basel, Instanbul as well as national and international art fairs. He likes to develop his art projects in New York where he lived for three years. (Guiseppe's site!)
Guiseppe Mastromatteo does some really interesting work, focusing on people and portraiture. Personally, I love his work, it's so different from the norm and really makes you look twice. Even better, the way his finished pieces come out look really professional yet are probably not all too difficult to recreate on Photoshop, simple uses of the lasso tool plus some extras and it's probable we could produce a similar product but looking at his work you wouldn't be able to guess that.

A lot of his work fits into the 'disguise' spectrum, so here are a few of my favourite pieces of his work that I can't wait to adapt and recreate.

It seems as though Guiseppe has simply used the lasso tool to paste the eye and eyebrow onto the arm of the subject. This would be really easy to do but also looks wicked, it's almost a juxtaposition of ideas though because in a sense she's hiding behind her arm but at the same time her face is coming through where she's hiding.
The red lips pop in this photo preventing it from being too boring and neutral.

As with a lot of Guiseppe's photos he has used a model with skin somewhat resembling porcelain. This gives each picture a kind of surreal feeling because the subject always seems to have a doll-like appearance, I like this photo a lot because it seems like the man is wearing a mask of his face which could represent quite a lot. For example, he could be hiding behind a persona based off of who he is but not identically the same.

 These photos are all a part of his Indepensense series from 2009. I think they're all very original and the quality and colours are fantastic. I love the cleanliness and simplicity which is a complete juxtaposition to the content of the photos.

 <This photo is probably my favourite in this series because I love the colour contrast between the black of the hair and red of the lips.
 The hair ones probably take the title 'disguise' most literally because the hair is used almost as a mask. When it comes down to it though I think I'd prefer something more discreet for my final piece.

Here are some more of his photos from a different series:

I absolutely love the above picture but have no idea how it would be recreated, I'd like to have a go at experimenting but it just looks absolutely flawless, like a platinum silver bust or a trophy of sorts. 

MY RECREATION

To create this image I used the magic wand tool to select the basic shape of the face, inverse selection and then burnt around the outside to create the shadowed mad effect. To create the string tie I just used the paint brush tool and then burnt patterns into it before using various filters to get the desired effect. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out because you can clearly see my inspiration in the photo.