GALLERY

manholes and trees

The first subjects I dealt with were cut trees and manholes, both objects almost omnipresent and at the same time totally invisible, inert and trampled objects with which most people have no reason or opportunity to relate.

Both these types of objects at first glance always seem identical, repeated indefinitely without some variation, but instead both in their own way have their varieties and peculiarities. They are singularities and as such the only carriers of a specific history of a specific beauty.
The manhole covers of a city, for example, can vary from area to area, some older, some newer, giving chronological information on where they are located. Often the manholes repeat themselves the same, but each according to the place in which it is located, with its peculiarities, linked to where in general, to the influences of the environment in which it is located.
Through photography it would be equally possible to classify manholes, but it would not be equally effective since in a photo, many other secondary elements enter to distract attention from the subject by overlapping and shading a minimal object like this. In fact, through the Tapian technique, those who print have the power to omit unnecessary elements and at the same time highlight others in order to give the subject full expression.
A similar situation is that of the cut trees, whose veins express variety, controlled randomness, richness and complexity of the work of nature that stands before our eyes every day and that we too often take for granted.

walls

Another subject of extreme eloquence is walls, also subjects whose absence would be unimaginable. They are right before our eyes twenty-four hours a day and therefore often full of history.
Also in this case, those who print with the Tapian technique can give a full voice to these inert surfaces. Not to mention the signs left by men, such as drawings or engraved words, which speaks for them; If we compare the printing of a new wall with an old one, we see the action and impact of time, of how one subject acquires personality and depth through the ‘”experience”; how each object, even in the most obvious and every day one, expresses a story that could be told through art.

other subjects

Since whoever prints in a certain sense revives the subject, he also has the opportunity of reinterpreting it, decontextualizing it in order to entrust it with new meanings, giving it a new voice. For instance, cracks on the ground or on the road can become rivers between pristine valleys, in the same way a cut tree can become a mountain that stands on a stretch of water. This shows how this printing technique is far from a passive copying technique, but like any form of art it is a creative act.
From this point of view the value of this technique is in giving visibility to a quantity of subjects invisible to our eyes, the importance is not so much the re-evaluation of the object as such but, it is the change that occurs in the relationship between the man and the world around him.
This renewed vision offers us new means of appreciating the surrounding reality, increases the desire to search for beauty in what is minimal and daily. That which is seen and reviewed is in my opinion the foundation for a complete reversal of the common feeling: what is worthy of artistic representation, is not only or not even the extraordinary, the exceptional, but the ordinary. The beauty resides not just in the object but also in the gaze, in the relationship that is established between the observer and the observed, between subject and object.
For example, these cracks on the road were exactly in front of my door, less than two meters away. I stepped on them and crossed over it hundreds of times, but they never communicated anything except for being just a “crack on the road”.
This was until the day I started studying this technique, it was enough that the intrinsic mechanism of the Tapian took possession of me and the time after I crossed them they were no longer mere cracks.
I saw in them new figures and meanings, all this without any intellectual effort. These new images, these new concepts, these spontaneous series of references appeared before me regardless of my will, as if to testify to the plurality of meanings potentially present in each signifier, if you have the time and the will to investigate them in depth.

The technique is purely Chinese, so in my works I have followed the original styles and practices. I have observed their tradition, and reinterpreted it in my own way.
Just as how Chinese artists have been doing it since the 19th century. They did so by combining print and paint. You may even find this practice in some of my works.
The Chinese tradition combines prints of objects from cultural and archaeological heritage, such as bronze artifacts, bas-reliefs, engraved characters along with paintings of subjects belonging to the category of flowers and birds.
These works belong to the class of Bogu hua (literally painting of ancient objects), which as mentioned are aimed at establishing direct contact with ancient culture.
In my works the purpose is different, the painting can serve as a support to the reinterpretation process of the printed object, or to strengthen its expressiveness.
In The Wonders of Huangshan the body of the mountains were created by printing a surface of a large stone, which then through the painting of the contours and the addition of elements such as trees and fog, led me to the representation of the typical peaks of the Yellow Mountain (Huangshan precisely). Here in a sense the printed subject is reinterpreted, through a process similar to the synecdoche, the stone becomes mountain, thanks solely to the support of painting.
Following the stylistic features of the Chinese tradition, my works show passages written by brush using the techniques of Chinese calligraphy, also regarding the texts in Latin characters, I follow the writing techniques of the cursive script (Caoshu 草书).
As tradition dictates, the texts do not have didactic or an explanatory purpose, it is only to enrich and add meaning to the work. Furthermore, there is always a final inscription which acts as a postscriptum and signature accompanied by a red seal. So that the work as a whole, is not only the print itself, but all the elements presented in it, which contributes to its aesthetic fullness and meaning, following the practical traditions of the literate Chinese artists (wenren hua 文人画).

Another aspect that has always fascinated me about this technique is its creative process, its profound and immediate materiality.
When you apply the paper on what you want to print, you have to make it adhere well, being careful not to leave out any relief or indentation. Even at this embryonic stage, we can already understand how the shape of each object is very different from how we perceive it in everyday life, it is actually more complex, more articulated.
This mysteriousness, this depth of form will emerge with ever greater clarity as the ink is applied. With each application, the object is reborn before our eyes, it forms and it grows, bringing to light a series of elements that our vision had ignored according to a process of natural simplification of our eyes. Elements that, once they appear on paper, it is impossible to overlook.

book of debris

China is a nation in continuous development and change, always in motion, this situation has a lot of feedback on society and the environment. One of the most evident and less discussed is the continuous destruction and construction of buildings all around the country. The scope of this situation, which probably represents a unique worldwide situation in the history of humanity, is comprehensible only if seen with our own eyes, by walking along the roads of Chinese cities, where everywhere you look you see enormous processes of demolition and reconstruction of all kinds of buildings. This has led to the cancellation of a huge part of Chinese architectural history, in fact not even the ancient buildings are spared from this destructive process: historical areas are razed to the ground to be rebuilt to look like ancient cities, and “ancient” is how they are named. The purpose of the book is precisely to denounce this situation, which is devastating for the urban landscape and cultural heritage of China. They are erasing the architectural variety, creating infinite identical cities, without any historical substrate, just huge containers of people. Furthermore, this process leads to the production of huge masses of debris, which if not properly disposed of, will contaminate the soil, water and air.
The book, like the debris that potentially pile up to the infinite, is not destined to have an end, but is always in constant expansion.