Chemistry, physics.
My work departs from a, at times scientist-like, scientific concept of existence. I can only conceive what science explains to me, each phenomenon, emotion and the human condition itself traces back to these two pillars on which everything stands.
My approach to these two sciences goes back to my childhood and has origins in my curiosity and constant search as a child for answers: experiments, trials, and reactions I searched for helped me to understand better what surrounded me and what I was part of. Mine was therefore, a self taught path, because chemistry and physics are only amusing when you can touch or smell them, and only then is the emotion created which I transfer to my work. If I had studied them in an academic way I doubt that I would be able to adapt them to the visionary concept I have of my work. And so through time I have realised that my method of research has always been closer to the process carried out by alchemists, made up of experimentations, because at the time, the study that goes on in modern science did not exist. They searched for supreme knowledge in order to resolve the problems of man through alchemy, which mixed chemistry and physics with astrology, numerology, medicine, mysticism, religion and art. I started to notice a series of similarities between the processes of my way of working with those of the alchemists: rituality, suffering, physically as well, experimentation and the furious, incessant search for absolute knowledge. Slowly a sort of mysticism pervaded me to the point that I was able to conceive chemistry and physics as one entity, like something above everything else. This is the principle of any and every religion.
Matter
Wood was my first element, the first material I was able to vent my innate, creative drive onto. I was born in the middle of the woods, and trees were my playmates, large enough to make me feel safe; I was lucky to have my parent’s wood shop right below the house, and as soon as I could, I would hole up there to build anything that popped into my imagination, with plenty of wood at my disposition. Through the years wood also became a way of making a living, by building furniture to make ends meet. Yet for many years I never thought of wood for my artistic research, I saw it too tied to sculpture and figurative things, and so I abandoned it in order to experiment with new techniques and other materials. I rediscovered it in the past few years and started to see it again through the eyes of a child, with an awareness and mastery of the material that comes from years of working with it. Wood is alive, even when dead, it is born from the sacrifice of a plant that once produced oxygen and was a vital element. It is also imbued with memory in its pulp. This is why wood lends itself perfectly to the human condition as a metaphor: I break it, distend it, strip it and make it explode, just like impulses do to human matter.
MEINE W.K., 2009
Larch wood, corrugated iron sheet and various materials
cm. 280 X 280 x 280
This installation re-creates my own personal wonderland room, a container that safely holds the essence of all my work: amazement. In each phase of my work an enormous amount of discard is left behind, the fruit of various steps leading to the quintessence of it. I have trouble getting rid of it because it has just as much value and meaning as the work itself. Keeping what is considered rubbish for anyone else is an obsession for me, it is actually the base of my research, and the sense in itself.
To experiment and amaze myself is the need, to express the thought through the work a necessity. I wanted to create a place in order to give value to that which apparently has none, inspired by concett odi Wunderkammer, a sort of backstage-sanctuary where no object is by chance, nor simply a set within the scene, but rather evokes a part of my research: the experiments, instruments, reactions, the undesired effects, pieces that did not work out, the smells, the physical pain, hopes, superstitions and the ambitions. It is a document of the memory of what will never be known about my work.
PIERCE (ME), TRANSFIX (ME) BUT KEEP (ME), 2009
Oak wood, iron
cm. 28 x 7 x 30I have never been able to control sweeping passion, nor have I the most untameable of impulses for that matter. I am unable to avoid them, even though each time I intuit the consequences they powerfully thrust into my soul, like a swift, violent dart. They break me in two and demolish me, but I have learned that the mind has a force, like strong nails, which are able to keep me together each and every time.
THE FIRST HOWL (THINKING ABOUT B.B.), 2009Explosion on linen
cm. 37 x 53
The sound of the Big Bang can still be heard after more than ten billion years through gravitational waves. Could the sound be infinite as well?
EXPLOSION AND TORSION, 2009Cherry wood
cm. 92 x 26 x 7
WHAT UNITES US,DIVIDES US, 2009
Cherry wood, nails
cm. 83 x 28 x 5The nail symbolically has two merits: of pain and suffering, but also of unity in that it is the instrument that has been used by man the longest to keep two pieces together.
I have pounded nails into a single trunk, starting from the top going all the way to the bottom, following the crack that forms on the surface from the pressure of the nails, causing it to open up. This is how a trunk splits into two parts. Imagine the trunk as a single entity symbolising the feelings of two individuals, this is why in actuality it is the elements themselves that should unite or separate.
SEMEL, BIS, TER, 2009Explosion on linen
cm. 50 x 54
OMOFONIA, 2009
Explosion on linen
In linguistics: the relationship between a word with different meanings but with the same pronunciation. In music: a plurineare composition in which the lines are an octave apart.
DIVIDED 2 FOR 7, 2009Fir wood
cm. 41x72It is a subdivision of matter, from a single block, through theoretically infinite binary divisions. I used a chisel to subdivide the block, a chisel of a certain dimension, like the minimal dimension that the smallest piece I was able to logically divide has.
Beyond that it would have been a break and not a division any longer.
The human mind needs a minimum dimension, because it is a chisel that chisels thoughts. Herein is the inconceivability of the infinite.
ESPLOSIONE, 2009Explosion on linen
cm. 140 x 74
VIS COMPULSIVA, 2009Oak, iron
cm. 48 x 24 x 10
HISTORY OF A VIOLENCE, 2009
Walnut wood, iron
cm. 20x62x19All the way from the times of ancient Greece, and then gradually through Indo-European cultures, the walnut plant was sacred to Artemide (Phoebe), the lunar goddess. It is a tree therefore with distinct feminine symbolism, so much that in eras of Inquisition it became the tree of witches. Iron represented Mars, god of war, thus power and man. An iron bar pounded into walnut wood, even though it is among the hardest and toughest, gives way under the violence of the matter that is pounded into it, deforming itself and generating cracks that can never be repaired. This is what remains in the female spirit when the violent, ferrous instinct of man frivolously emits as if nothing.
LAST SUPPER EXPLODED (TWELVE + ONE), 2009cm. 148 x 212
Potassium permanganate, explosions, and burnt black powder on linen
I CONFIDE MY DOUBTS TO THE OAK, 2009
Oak, iron
cm. 113x11x32
The oak, the sacred tree par excellence, is a symbol of wisdom, strength and virtue for every culture. It represents man. It has roots that dig very deep into the earth, (the material aspect) and extremely tall branches that reach to the sky (the spiritual aspect): the completeness and balance of the human condition. I like the idea of violently pounding a interrogativo gancio=sizable hook in the shape of a question mark? into wood, for all that it has seen and for as long as it will last, as if to evoke all my angry perplexities and implore certainties. WhoamIwhatamIwhereamIgoingwhatwillbecomeofme? Maybe the oak knows something about these matters.
LAST WOODEN SUPPER (DODICI + UNO), 2009Walnut wood, wax, string
cm. 43 x 14 x 11
SUBDIVISION, 2009
DILATATION, 2009
Oak, iron
cm 57 x 6 x 1
DILATATION, 2009Oak, iron
cm. 126 x 6 x 11
DILATATION WITH BOLTS, 2009
Oak, bolts
cm. 110 x 4 x 11
EGO VS. PARANOID, 2009
Fir wood, nails
cm. 53x10x21
An explosive charge placed in a hollow dug out between two fir planks, and then later nailed together, and in blowing up opposes the strength of the explosion under the constriction of the nailing. A metaphor of the painful, yet stable balance between the power of the ego and the oppression of its anguish.
3, 2009 
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