It seemed initially impossible to find an effective and original visual technique to render my apocalyptic vision without abdicating my faith in the natural positive potential of mankind’s growth in terms of awareness: that is, of becoming soon aware of the incumbent threat to values, scopes and meanings needed by mankind to continue to exist. In reality, once started, the ‘journey through hell’ has become fluid, rich of stimulations and unexpected surprises. The search for beauty in the colours, tones, lines, looking at Great Masters of the past and to those of more contemporary times, and the contamination between painting, music, and poetry, have alimented my optimism with regard to mankind. The use of photography has guided me and suggested the evocative effects of colours.
Fascinated by forms, texture, tones, etc., I accumulated in my studio piles of all kinds of packing materials mainly for computers and printers. Till the moment came I decided to take a series of photographs of landscapes built with those materials in the studio and to introduce in these landscapes various handmade objects/fragments collected during my travels around the world, mainly in Africa.
I found intriguing introducing in these artificial landscapes the conceptual contamination between the idea of the organic element manipulated and forged through handwork by human fantasy or by natural elements like water, wind etc., and the idea of the mechanically produced objects generated by a system of production governed exclusively by the criteria of maximum productivity, pure exploitation of nature and machines, ignoring the perverse and dehumanizing effects and their consequences for mankind.
Objects represent memory, fantasy, juxtaposition of experience and introduce us as ‘ancient’ persons carrying the signs of time and suggesting the relentless process of stratification and accumulation in the evolution of human history and cultural production. The mechanically, serially produced pieces, on the other hand, are expression of an alienating process of production that ignores the fundamental concept of human totality (the ‘mechanical’ body and mind in a harmonious interaction) and thus founded on the idea of abatement and negation of the unique human nature.
The extremely evocative images produced by means of photography have revealed themselves as an inexhaustible source for visual research. In the initial works I introduced sand paper, gun gum, bitumen, etc. To immerge, dirty, scratch, irritate the body by using these products useful but also aggressive, rough to the touch and sticky, sometimes stinking, has become a fascinating part of a process of full immersion, therefore in large part also physical, in my attempt to make art. These images brought to the surface a deep feeling of disquiet and preoccupation for the tendency shown by the human evolution and for the impact that the current transformation can have on human interaction. At the start of the third millennium we still witness devastating wars and unacceptable living conditions for too many innocent people, millions of children. This idea has inspired a few series of works on war, the diffused children’s abuse and the devastation of environment.
The materials , their reutilisation, and the re-constructing technique itself, used for the realization of the works through the process of stratification and juxtaposition, become a metaphor for a process of resistance and opposition to decay and to a reality always more “inhuman” in its evolution, a reality that can be resisted and redirected through art, awareness and knowledge.