Not just by computer

From an interview to Koozarch about Untitled Landscapes Collection

The project started by chance because of my desire to return to draw by hand, with no tools, even the ruler. I've always drawn by hand but hardly with this desire, determination and continuity. Maybe this way of drawing, regular, methodical, flowing and non-stop, could be compared to the art of automatic writing, because the making of the drawing is very fast, spontaneous, without any hesitation. It's strange but the project was born in the hand before, and in the head after. It's quite like fitness: the more you do and the more you benefit. It's just let go of his hand and start drawing lines. Then, it was all easy; with a black pen and a little sheet of paper only, you can draw anywhere, anytime without any limitation of time and space. I spent every spare moment of my day in these drawings. Even just 10 minutes, waiting for the subway or listening to someone talking.

The driving force was, day after day, can hold in my hands a never ending growing stack of drawing. In our digital world, where everything is intangible and bidimensional, I think it's great sitting in front of a table full of drawings to touch and to mix. Then the project started to take shape and I had the idea of collecting all of the drawings in a systematic way.

As mentioned, this project came quite spontaneously without any particular graphic references. At the end, by my side, what it was interesting to analyze is, more than anything else, the process instead of the result. The way of drawing very fluent, fast, spontaneous, almost obsessive and repetitive, made me interested in those forms of automatic art, mechanical writing and minimal art. For this reason, l watched the works of Roman Opalka and Hanne Darboven and I found them really interesting. Other artists that I consider important references are Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt and Daniel Buren. Graphically, I like Franco Purini very much.

The project is to be printed and shown in a 3 by 3 elements square grid containing 25 drawings each (5 by 5). But I believe that the drawings are indipendent also and can be printed in other sizes and compositions and on various media (canvas, for example). A picture book is an excellent idea (I'm working on it, now). I think the effect that all the drawings would do flipping through pages very quickly. The original drawings, however, are stored in a box, but I would like to find the right place for them.

I consider the drawings than I did, as a resource. It is not a finished work. I should start a second phase, I say, of "transformation". So I don't exclude any kind of new use (like as digital manipulation). I consider these drawings as excellent textures to be included in a new digital project. It could be a three dimensional also, of course. First, I could work on transparency, splitting the black graphic sign from white bottom of the paper. This could be the first step towards a three-dimensional view of the work. I think it would be interesting to enter and to walk trough these virtual landscapes.

It's fascinating to think about the endless possibilities that the probabilistic calculation offers to create thousands of different combinations (225N!). It could be the project that would engage me for the rest of life! Seriously, the postion of every drawing into the 5x5 grid has been a project in the project. I tried to work especially on symmetry by creating visual relationships between similar figures. Then I worked on kind of images: there are some returning themes and shapes. Finally, the handwriting: there are some darker works and other lighter. I believe that, at the end, each of the 9 squares board, is rather unitary and makes a new image that comes from the sum of all the 25 drawings that contains. The eye loses the focus on each of the 25 drawings to generate a new image single and unitary. But as mentioned, this may just be one of endless possibilities.

If you think about Europe, and the Western world in generally, in the last 300 years, you see how the city has been planned almost always by the capitalist rent. The city has always been an instrument to bring income to financial groups and banks. So it is good to avoid surprises, alternative and everything that affects the predictability and stability which are the basis for obtaining income from what you invested. Everything has been planned in detail and the only focus to follow is profitability. For this reason, the city in which we live are losing personality, particularity and character to become a boring standardized unfinished melted conurbation. Unfortunately, there are only few cities, or parts of them, that try to break this pattern. There are some spontaneous resistance episodes trying to oppose this transformation, but they are more and more isolated. The situation all over the world, however, is very different. Our vision is very short sighted. Worldwide, about 1 billion people live in favelas or slums, spontaneous urban agglomerations without any rules or planning. And these are anything but boring and predictable. The cities are too complex machines to explain and often escape the rules that we are trying to give them, up to produce unexpected results. For these reason I say them "faceted". At the end, all of this is very fascinating by my side. What I try to make visible by my drawings is this contrast between different types of cities, or parts of cities, at that same time, ignoring one another.

The square comes from my syntactic architecture vision (I basically am an architect). The geometry, and mostly the square, in a certain way, is the rule. Then, we can decide what to do in front of the rule. We can respect it, we can try to play it but we can also subvert it. The frequent square in my drawings reminds me of the rule and what I draw, in a certain way, decides, each time, what to do with the rule. Just like, every day, in every city in the world.