vaciar la mochila
“Vaciar la Mochila” literally means “to empty the backpack.” The metaphorical meaning is to take stock of one’s emotional and experiential baggage and to shake off the weight of the things that make it difficult to move forward. I started traveling as a young man with nothing but a backpack, and “vaciar la mochila” quickly became an essential routine for adapting to my surroundings and staying flexible. You have to be good at choosing what to keep, though. Unexpectedly, many years later, I find myself in the situation where i was for long time no able to understand what was the essential. This project staged the destruction of those works created during a phase when art and lifestyle were deeply intertwined in my creative process, and one had become indispensable to the other. I kept these works for years with the idea that they might become my artistic language but at the end it never happened and i found my self trapped in dream that became a container somewhere in Berlin. That was the hardest part to acknowledge. When it comes to managing a backpack, from its weight to how it’s organised, some techniques are more functional than others, but in the end, it all depends on the awareness of the the surrounding environment, the kind of journey and the own capabilities. A backpack must, first and foremost, be true to the person carrying it.
In the end, “vaciar la mochila”, deciding who and what to care on and what, on the other hand, to let go, is an ongoing process in life, and part of it can only be learned through experience.
By recording this process, the weight of matter was transformed into digital memory, just as the weight in the heart was transformed into a lesson.
PASHA
2023
Video MPEG-4
04:48 “
1920 × 1080
Stereo
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Original painting.
2019
Mix media on PVC.
Unknown size.
Realized togheter with the artist Pasha Cas.
“We did this piece toghetr shortly after meeting at Pasha show in Berlin back in 2019 and it became the symbol of a friendship that born since. Because the nature of a our nomadic lifestyle, after few year that i kept this piece with me, i couldn’t i keep it anymore and so i decide to erase it in a performative way. The piece is gone but our friendship is still there.”
Mastica e sputa
2023
Video MPEG-4
04:26 “
1920 × 1080
Stereo
-
Original painting.
2015-2016
Mix media on Plasterboard.
Unknown size.
This was the first piece I created shortly after arriving in Berlin in 2015.
I remember living somewhere near Bethaniendam, in an apartment with little natural light but spacious enough to have an empty room to use as a studio. I was living with my best friend. Moving to a new city takes some time to adjust to, and in the first few months I really couldn’t create anything. But we had both come to Berlin to continue our journey in art and we spend our night dreaming about it. Finally, one day, it happened: I was home all alone and started painting, guided by a sensation that was almost physical: the need to embody, to absorb the reality of Berlin. As if in a theatrical role, I painted while wearing a secondhand military coat I’d bought at a military surplus store in Prenzlauer Berg for 1 euro. That night I ended up getting drunk covered in pink paint, coloured the jacket (which would become my trademark for the next two years), creating chaos all around me, and getting thrown into the bathtub by my friend who had returned from work.
I had everything; I felt so happy.”
The following year, I began a work conceived as a complement to the first, precisely to bring to the surface everything that had accumulated and to bring my time in Berlin to a close. Of this second work, only the outline of the body ever saw the light of day, and I still keep the objects that were meant to represent the accumulated knowledge. Ten years have passed and I’m still in Berlin
Joy
2023
Video MPEG-4
03:03 “
1920 × 1080
Stereo
-
Original painting.
2015-2016
Mix media on Glass.
Unknown size.
Joy
2023
Video MPEG-4
03:03 “
1920 × 1080
Stereo
-
Original painting.
2015-2016
Mix media on Glass.
Unknown size.
Vision
2024
Digital Render
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Digital Design Atlas: Spring 2024 Issue, "Inside Reflect's World: A Deep Dive into Cutting-Edge Digital Creations"
Lumo Gallery: On Display Spring 2024