I was born in Milan In 1972. I spent my childhood in California, from where I moved, after some years, back to Italy where my family settled in Lucca and later in Florence. I have a M.A. in Sculpture obtained at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze.
When I was in my 20's I turned to painting. I lived and worked in San Francisco, New York, Bali, Berlin, isola d'Elba inTuscany and Florence.
I paint starting from photography, but in my paintings there is no will to copy the photographic image with hyperrealist trait. Mostly are urban spaces, seen, visited and photographed over the years, which I reproduce in painting. I walk across cities in search of corners and sights, as if I had to find the right place to shoot a film scene or tell a story. I am seeking a frame that will make a story meaningful. In my travels and in my encounters I accumulate and archive images that I will later be able to transform into paintings.
My paintings must contain a story, an undisclosed story. The details of paintings fill a void, creating a new and even more evident one : the disappearance of life, the stillness, the silence.
The starting point is the photographic reality. Through subsequent painting process I seek a result that, while leaning on reality, moves away from it, softening into imperfection.The often obsessive work of pictorial reproduction of deserted street corners, buildings, street signs, empty cars, figures and geometries is my attempt to find a language capable of giving me back a little poetry.
Emptiness, sense of time, timelessness, memory and its marks, lack,absence, silence, suspension, illusion are all elements that can be extrapolated from a photographic image and translated into painting.
In my paintings the observer is a solitaire moving around the world andlooking at it. From time to time, he stops his gaze on something orsomeone. Buildings, streets, faces, bodies, everything has a date, atime and has accumulated a memory.
"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings,photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs,trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case,always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said:“It’s not where you take things from – it's where you take them to.” Jim Jarmusch, The Golden Rules of Filming
