The Italian Artist Making Sculptures in Isolation

This quarantine period has been very productive for me. Even though I couldn't have my collaborators here anymore, I produced a lot on my own, to express my dissatisfaction. Many feelings that, in such a hot moment, couldn't even be put into words. I work a lot with social media, I was born there. For me, it's very important to see how users relate to the work. Today, the fear of losing human contact comes out a lot. When, fundamentally, the deepest and most authentic human contact has always been very rare. Only today, with the metaphor of technology, we can see it much more clearly. We can see the lack of human contact, the lack of time, the desire to touch, but there's always some fear, some inhibition, some fear of losing yourself in the other. Touchscreen was born in 2018. This work has been exhibited twice at the Museo della Triennale di Milano, which is a very important museum for design. We're doing a second version. The first approach I had with art was as a child. I enjoyed creating accumulations with my toys. For many years, this thing was interrupted. Until I was 21, when I rediscovered this passion following various experiences, my personal experiences, that were rather unsettling. So I dedicated myself to exploring the first social networks that were emerging. YouTube was emerging, with the first YouTubers, the first influencers, those who would later be called influencers. And I saw in those characters, and in their independence, a way to get to know me and one day be able to dedicate myself to art and come out as an artist. Five years later, after I had about a million followers at the time I was very strong. My first works were the Actor on Canvas, which were laser scans, so I get a laser scan of the body, I get a 3D file of various performances that I want to interpret, of various conditions of the human soul that I want. There I discovered modeling. My series was born, the one that today makes me a little more known, which is the series that deals with the relationship between man and technology. And so the first work was Connection, which tells about digital natives, but at the same time tells a lot more about the relationship between the child and the mother, the eternal connection we have with our parents. From here, Touch Screen. This Touch Screen is born from that technological process and then becomes an artisanal process. So a rubber is passed all over the surface of the sculpture, so we are going to strain the resin, then the glass, the fiberglass. We wait for the drying. After that, we proceed to all the refinishing, which is a very, very long process. To go and take back details that were lost during the molding, the knuckles, parts of the hands. Then there is the assembly of the two computers and the base, the varnish, and then the base. You will simply see it as the demonization of technology, to which I always try to stay away, but which, together with which I return, sometimes, as an artist, and who, on the other hand, can see the other. Indeed, I am a great lover and supporter of technology. The online exhibition of one of my works even becomes the date of certification and realization of the work itself. Because it is as if it had come to life at that moment, because it is at that moment that people have been able to see it, to enjoy it, to see it, to have it as an indication of what is happening within us, in the world. COVID-19 has influenced all artists, not just the Italian community. Many activities have skipped me. When the first lockdown arrived here in Italy, I had exhibitions in some Italian museums, I had to come to New York to do an installation in a park, I had to do so many things that were canceled. But at the same time, many others were born, because a whole new feeling came out in me that had to be expressed through new works related to quarantine. In some way, precisely through this quarantine, I found myself forced to go down from the altars of the offline and I found myself forced to go online. And this has created many new connections for me. She is like a bridge between the period that precedes, the period during, and the period that follows the quarantine. And we hope that she is also a bridge for a new future, certainly. I can't say if it's better, but certainly new and more aware. I don't have the courtesy to convey a precise message. Each work tells me something about me and remains mine, intimate and personal. And its goal is that everyone tells something about themselves.