CAMERA SCURA - Artistique approach
At the moment, I am involved with the Camera Scura series. My work explores what lies beneath appearances: the sediment of memory, the collective unconscious, and the invisible architectures that shape our inner lives. Rather than depicting the world in a literal way, I use abstraction to evoke traces, shadows, and presences that hover between emergence and disappearance. These paintings are not meant to represent a fixed image; they are invitations to enter a psychic space where time accumulates in layers, and where the visible and the invisible constantly interact.
The title “Camera Scura” is central to my approach. Like a dark chamber where light projects an image from outside, I think of our consciousness as a space where myths, ancestral tales, and lived experiences are silently imprinted. In this inner room, memories are never completely erased; they leave behind pentimenti, ghostly marks, and fragments that reappear unexpectedly. My use of acrylic inks, paints, and collage on canvas mirrors this process. The inks bring translucency and fluidity, allowing veils of color to overlap like half-remembered stories. The acrylic paints introduce dense, opaque zones—firm decisions, sudden assertions, or moments of clarity. Collage adds a material thickness, a physical stratification that corresponds to the layers of our personal and collective histories.
Structurally, these works often draw on grids, bands, and interlocking blocks that recall fragments of architecture: walls, thresholds, windows, or floor plans. This is not a purely formal choice; it reflects my interest in the idea of an inner architecture of the psyche. Each plane, each division can be read as a room, a compartment, or a passage—an intangible map of our mental and emotional landscapes. The paintings thus become a kind of cartography of the unconscious, where the boundaries are porous and spaces overlap, echoing the complexity of human introspection.
Light and shadow play a crucial role in this language. Areas of luminous color—warm yellows, subtle pinks, fiery reds—confront muted greys, deep browns, or shadowy purples. This tension evokes the fragile balance between revelation and obscurity, between what we dare to see and what remains hidden. I am less interested in providing answers than in opening a field of resonance where viewers can project their own memories and questions. In this sense, the Camera Scura series continues my broader artistic research: to create works that “shake up our senses and push us to think about our condition and position in the Universe,” not through narrative illustration, but through the emotional and symbolic power of matter and form.
Even when no human figure is explicitly represented, a strong human presence is always there. The surfaces, with their erasures, reworkings, and traces, are like skins that have lived many lives. The notion of pentimentI—of a previous image still haunting the final state—speaks to our own layered identities, permanently marked by what we have seen, felt, and forgotten. My long-standing engagement with glass, metal, and sculpture informs this pictorial work: I approach the canvas as a material object to be built, worn, and transformed, not as a simple support for an image.
Ultimately, Camera Scura is part of a continuous trajectory in my practice: to study, invent, and transcend materials and techniques in order to give shape to the intangible. By combining acrylic inks, paints, and collage, I seek a language where each layer is both a covering and a revelation, where the painting itself becomes a living archive of decisions, doubts, and rediscoveries. In this dark chamber of the canvas, light does not simply reveal forms; it uncovers the depth of our inner worlds, inviting the viewer to dwell in the fertile zone between memory and imagination, clarity and mystery.
Short version:
At the moment I am involved with the Camera Scura series. My work explores what lies beneath appearances: the sediment of memory, the collective unconscious, and the invisible architectures that shape our inner lives. Rather than depicting the world in a literal way, I use abstraction to evoke traces, shadows, and presences that hover between emergence and disappearance. These paintings are not fixed images; they are invitations to enter a psychic space where time accumulates in layers, and where the visible and the invisible constantly interact.
The title “Camera Scura” is central to my approach. Like a dark chamber where light projects an image from outside, I think of our consciousness as a space where myths, ancestral tales, and lived experiences are silently imprinted. In this inner room, memories are never completely erased; they leave behind ghostly marks and fragments that reappear unexpectedly. My use of acrylic inks, paints, and collage mirrors this process. Inks bring translucency and fluidity, allowing veils of color to overlap like half-remembered stories. Acrylic paint introduces dense, opaque zones—decisive moments or sudden clarities. Collage adds material thickness, a physical stratification that corresponds to the layers of our personal and collective histories.
Structurally, the works often draw on grids, bands, and interlocking blocks that recall fragments of architecture: walls, thresholds, windows, or floor plans. This is not a purely formal choice; it reflects my interest in an inner architecture of the psyche. Each plane or division can be read as a room, a compartment, or a passage—an intangible map of our mental and emotional landscapes. Light and shadow play a crucial role: areas of luminous color confront muted, shadowy zones, evoking the fragile balance between revelation and obscurity, between what we dare to see and what remains hidden.
Ultimately, Camera Scura continues my broader artistic research: to study, invent, and transcend materials and techniques in order to give shape to the intangible. By combining acrylic inks, paints, and collage, I seek a language where each layer is both a covering and a revelation, and where the painting itself becomes a living archive of decisions, doubts, and rediscoveries.
