ARTIST STATEMENT

Pants down, elbows resting on knees, a face bent over a smartphone, in loneliness. These are definitely not the kind of portraits one would include in a CV and very few would lend themselves to be represented like this. And yet, we all could. Life is but a slow succession of “unpresentable” gestures, rituals onto which our entire existences are grafted but which remain obstinately behind closed doors. From the fulfillment of physiological needs to the performance of cosmoses, to drug addictions and sexual tendencies: each of us conceals a hidden world or persona, which has to be constrained or corrected in order for us to conform to the dominant social norm. My works deal with this hidden underworld. They try to reproduce, and potentially augment, the universal paradox of a gesture which we fulfill in private, but which each of us performs in the exact same way. 

In other words, a pattern which repeats itself, such as the even grid of black dots which spreads across my works. Little islands floating amidst on a neutral backdrop—perhaps, the white render of an interior. We are all subject to taboos, illusory frameworks which shroud and punctuate our existence. And though it might be impossible to demolish or overcome these frameworks, we can at least try to comprehend them, or render them visible through visual disclosure. My works attempt to do so through leveraging on a visibly and deliberately pop imaginary. They upset conventional art production and broadcasting processes, being born digital only to be later translated on canvas. The strokes are intentionally imprecise, the dots uneven, but harmonious overall. 

My works act out a shattering moment of collective reappropriation. The reclamation of an imperfection, which is at the same time perfect because it is part of a shared history (which extends backwards into the 90s to culminate in the present debate on climate change): a consciousness-raising which can be multiplied for as many times as are the subjects which engage in it. 

I’ve often been asked why I choose to represent certain subjects or why many of my works feature “black dots”. The answer is relatively straightforward: I’m interested in the everyday and especially in those mundane and natural gestures which all humans tend to practice on a daily basis (taking a shit, having a bath, having sex, etc.). I also have an obsession with the “taboo” and with the dismantling of that typically bourgeoise conformism according to which instances like drugs, sex, and plastic surgery represent transgressions to be repressed rather than than genuine manifestations of human nature to be interrogated and questioned (perhaps even celebrated!). From a metaphorical standpoint, the “black dots” featuring in my work represent my frustration with the ignorance and bigotry of the present West, and especially with routine, and with those feelings and events which repeat themselves in the lives of many such as love, anger, death, etc.

We are very much the same, after all.