etcher, printer and photographer

interview


HOW DO YOU ELABORATE YOUR PARTICULAR SUBJECTS?

They are not born from an idea or from a mental image, but simply from the casualness of the signs. After various attempts, they are the signs themselves to make to spring an element of the composition or simply turned a detail. On this, for association or better for assemblage of elements among the most disparate, is possible to built  an "image" that at the end it doesn't preserve traces or elements of human figure. My effort is really that to definitely cancel them. My subjects are a direct filiation of the manikins of the metaphysical painting of De Chirico but at the same time they are different. They have lost every contact with the human figure, rather they seem to be similar to some fetishes or totems and they seem to come from another world, a parallel an invisible world. Immersed in a silent desolation they convey the idea to be the only testimony of a civilization by now extinct.

FROM HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU DEVOTE YUORSELF TO THE ETCHING AND WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN THIS KIND OF TECNIQUE?

I have been practising the etching for twenty years. I am a full autodidact. I taught myself the etching technique and the printing technique too, buying a printing press and all the necessary materials. In this way, I control the entire creative process, the elaboration of the sketch to the finished print. The etching is for me the only technique that can represent my subjects. And this because, in my opinion, the etching is a technique particularly suited, as he said Redon, to give representation to the invisible world, the imaginary and oneiric world from which I draw inspiration for my prints.

WHAT ARE THE DIFFICULTIES YOU HAVE TO FACE IN YOUR ARTISTIC WORK?

The etching is a technique that does not admit mistakes. It can hardly be remedied. The difficulties concern the whole process: from the reproduction of the sketch on the plate, to the biting of the plate with acid and to the printing, which requires a lot of experience. But not only that. Practicing this art is an endless exercise in patience and co ncentration, because it requires slowness and time consuming. Often many weeks have to pass before you can see the result of your work.