Turin has always been my city, the place where I was born and grown up, where I studied and have always lived. Ever since I was a child, I was drawn to the search for truth. I naively I wanted to know everything about creation, I wanted to meet God, and I was also fascinated by science. When I grew up I dreamed of becoming an astronomer because in this way I could have known the universe, discover planets and other civilizations. Then, when adolescence came, years of great suffering began, and my true calling came out: what I really wanted to do with my life was to make the invisible visible, finding a way to perceive, know and communicate the mystery of life. And here I am served. I was sure that only art could achieve the magical, direct, tangible, concrete dialogue with Being, making shape, color, sound, action, because I was in desperate need of human warmth.
At first I was fascinated by the paintings of Toulouse Lautrec, Chagall, later more by Matisse and also by Arte Povera, which was very different, conceptual and all kinds of experimental art. After completing my studies painting at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts, I felt the urge to create a path of true spiritual evolution, really deep. It was this tension that I wanted to transform into a sign through expressive language. I considered art to be a diaphragm placed on the surface of consciousness, a warp gate able to take me far, beyond my loneliness, beyond my shadow. In the creative catharsis I was able to observe myself from the outside, I began to observe my thoughts, I reached a beginning of meditation that I would later focus on better with Zen and mindfulness practice.
… and on my works
I’ve always enjoyed experimenting. A series of collages on which I worked for some years is entitled Alétheia, a word that in Greek means “what is revealed”, a truth that cannot be hidden. I took images from the media stream, or pages from magazines and flyers, to apply a process of study, analysis, and ritual manipulation: I folded, cut out and colored them to transform into a texture, in order to obtain a multitude of fragments which I later composed into a final assembly. The meaning is only apparently hidden by the logic of forms and colors: what seems evident is very often deceptive, it leads to people’s opinion and consent, instead, the distance from the real world created by art allows us to better see what is actually evident.
Later I mainly created installations and sculptures. I was looking for a suitable sign to interpret people and society, able to combine ethics and aesthetics regardless of specific contents that belong to the debate of political ideas. So, using simple cardboard, I began to build long structures imitating a barbed wire, one of the simplest and at the same time terrifying modern technological inventions. The result was a light and harmless texture, which at first glance seems to be the product of natural germination rather than a human work , an aerial appearance that creates lights and shadows, in the balance of bright variations, in the rhythmic and hypnotic intertwining, where the filaments seem to indicate an encrypted code, perhaps the genetic code of human nature.
A recurring theme in my works is the relationship between fiction and reality that is expressed in the paradox, which is evident both in the cardboard barbed wire, and in the weapons modeled in bread dough, a material that recall life and community dimension; and in the video Memories of fire, for example, where a fragment of reality perceived in an unstable way becomes a frame that at a certain moment catches fire, consumes and turns into ashes; and in the bread burners, primary, archetypal forms, performative tools at the service of imaginary, archaic rituals. We also find the same theme in the ground drawings inspired by printed circuits and microchips in which people go inside, cross them, live them; and in the immersive installation Sunya Quantum Space the design completely envelops the walls and ceiling of a room. The RupaTeaBoxes are small sculptures built with boxes of tea, chamomiles and herbal teas: instead of being the circuits that are big, this time it is we who become little ones and imagine entering them. Finally, to give a last example, in Folder the Sea, the origin of life, it is the sea itself that remains imprinted on transparent sheets folded into elegant drapery: reason alone fails to explain what we can know only through direct experience.
I am interested in the concept of emptiness, of mindfulness, of impermanence, of not-self. Eastern culture has investigated them thoroughly, and Zen teaches knowledge through practice, avoiding conceptualization and any doctrinal or dogmatic approach. In my works these themes intertwine, so they often lend themselves to different levels of reading, which enrich each other. This is true regardless of the specific expressive language I have chosen: drawing, visual poetry, sculpture, installation, photography, video art; and also relational art: NamVisualArt, which included Obliterations, was an experimental work that involved several artists, shops and clubs that hosted small exhibitions.
In recent years I have been devoting myself mainly to painting. In the Happiness Garden series, geometric shapes freely inspired by printed circuits board and microchips build virtual architectures, flows of energy become abstract forms, flowers, plants, animals, often even figures inspired by life and the history of art. All these variations are infinite expressions of beauty. Happiness lies in the awareness of an overall vision, a fusion level with the deep self that in my creative practice I like to call rupa-yoga, which is the yoga of form. Mindfulness applied to art can guide our consciousness, release the spirit and spread this life energy around us, and reach people.