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Respiro

The sculptures and installations of this period are joined by works on paper, often large in size: while focusing on questions that cross the entire artist’s oeuvre,Mostra di Più

certain of these works offer us a chance for perhaps a closer approach to his personal sphere, almost to his physical being. We might talk about a proximity that is exposed to the gaze, in a cycle of works on paper under a single title: Respiro (Breath). The large sheets of paper lined up in overlaid rows are crossed by bundles of sinuous lines that flee to the margins. The observer is attracted by their slenderness and, at the same time, their evidence, deceptively like filaments, or hairs embedded in applied onto the paper. The sign is actually obtained with ink, but – as the artist explains – the result is possible only through particular physical and mental preparation: “To obtain this sign, it takes a gesture done with a special brush, with long bristles, dipped in ink. The ink held by the bristles is deposited with a wide, flowing, continuous gesture. Breathing is important: the exhalation accompanies the whole trajectory of the sign on the paper, and the air contained in the lungs is released in synchrony with the release of the ink from the bristles. The lines that cross the sheet have their own shape. Those modulations can be compared to the signs made by a seismograph: the point of the brush records an inner state, just at the tip of the seismograph records telluric movements, or the encephalogram records brain activity.” It is breathing, then, its rhythm, that determines the fluid movement of the lines that cross the paper.

Respiro. Ink on paper, 6 sheets 66×101 cm each, 2009 [D0391]

Respiro. Ink on paper, 6 sheets 66×101 cm each, 2009 [D0392]

Respiro. Ink on paper, 6 sheets 66×101 cm each, 2009 [D0393]