What did your training at IED and, later, your experience at San Servolo give you?
I attended the art high school in Milan and then chose to enrol not at the Brera Academy but at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED), which gave me the cultural tools – semiology, sociology, semiotics – to work with form and to build a project, a coordinated visual identity. Then I became passionate about technological systems: at twenty-two I was already tinkering with Photoshop. I have seen programs come and go, and I learned to combine manual skill with digital drawing. From Milan I then moved to Venice, the city where I was born. I fell in love with Eastern lacquers and took a lacquering course at San Servolo. It was a decisive experience: at twenty-three I understood that there was another perspective, a way of painting and creating completely different from ours, just as Eastern writing is different.
This openness gave rise to a non-classical way of understanding decoration. How did your DecorAzione project take shape?
I wanted to find a craft that reflected my research, and I found it in ornament, which is cross-cutting by nature: it allows me to work on a glass, a fabric, a car or inside a home. I started with classical decoration, trompe-l’œil, but from the very beginning I wanted to propose something different. That is how DecorAzione was born: “decor” and “azione” (action), a decoration in motion. The idea was not to stay within a single field, but to move from one sector to another while keeping the same identity and the same vision.
My practice is based on a modular system: art, interiors, design and education. Skills can pass from one field to another, following changes in the market, without ever losing the artistic starting point. This is also why I have always tried to hold research and practicality together: I reinvested part of what I earned in equipment and materials, so that I could experiment and propose new solutions. My economy is circular; it is a moving castle.
Some important collaborations with the worlds of luxury, fashion and design gave you tools that helped shape your artistic and entrepreneurial identity. What did you learn?
For years I created the window displays for Pomellato’s boutiques, where I followed the work from the idea through to production – and even logistics! I learned to design by holding together composition, timing and feasibility. In fashion, working on fabrics and installations, I discovered how an idea could change medium and context without losing its identity. Later I worked as art director for a textile company, focusing above all on method and product development. It was an important experience: creativity needs a system that allows ideas to become objects, with attention to materials, people and production.
After these experiences I went back to working mainly in decoration and interiors. It is a field where research can meet concrete needs, and where many of my most recent projects have taken shape.
In 2003 you invented the Quadrolibro. How did the idea of an artwork that can be folded and carried with you come about?
The Quadrolibro is one of the products I love most: a work for wandering travellers. I come from Venice, from Byzantine light, from water, from glass and metal that reflect and change, and I carry with me this fascination with change, which introduces the fourth dimension, the temporal one.
At the time I was making ever larger paintings, but I kept wondering where to put them. So I thought of breaking them down into modules, taking inspiration from sixteenth-century maps. The panels fold into a box: I can store them and take them with me. I use paper and heat-adhesive fabric, a material also used in fashion. I am interested in recovering the ingenuity of ancient techniques and applying it with contemporary materials.
I start from images and photographs, trace their outlines and build the composition through printing and handwork. Shellac and gold leaf may come into play. The result is a painting that is not a painting: it closes, changes shape, moves. Even the metal used for the decoration changes with the daylight. That is why I consider it a work that goes beyond the boundaries of the traditional object: a quantum work.
Your research on light continues with the Arràs, while your work also includes more traditional decorative commissions. How do these two sides coexist?
The Arràs are fabric tapestries that incorporate optical fibre. I discovered this material in a magazine and began to imagine how to turn it into a decorative surface. I had been inspired by an exhibition of the Medici tapestries designed by Bronzino: I thought I could take up that tradition with a contemporary material. The Arràs change with the light: they live both switched off and switched on, and over the course of the day they reveal different aspects. I like this almost metaphysical transformation, which brings the viewer’s perception into play.
Alongside this research there are also more classical commissions, such as the decoration of the ceiling of the Teatro Gerolamo in Milan. To create it, I prepared a modular system of cartoons: a single element, shifted and repeated, allowed me to build a complex decoration while keeping time and dimensions under control. It is the same method that defines me: designing something small that, once assembled, becomes large.
What artistic references accompany your research?
I start from the Eastern world and the twentieth century. My master is De Chirico, with his metaphysical vision; I love the Surrealists, especially the more graphic ones like Magritte, and the historical avant-gardes, which revolutionised the way we see dimensions. Whenever I have a doubt, I go back to those artists, their works and their stories. I am also very interested in figures who were able to move between art and the applied arts, such as Vittorio Zecchin, who painted on gold and was one of Venini’s great designers, and Alphonse Mucha, who succeeded in bringing artistic language into decorative and graphic art.
This is also my mission: to show that ornament, when supported by research and by thought, has its own artistic importance. I am interested in craft design and in everything that allows the techniques and languages of the past to be carried towards what is to come.
What does passing on knowledge mean to you?
Ours are crafts that must be handed down: all the knowledge we have exists because someone passed it on.
I teach arts and crafts, applying ancient techniques to the contemporary world, both through private courses in my atelier and at external institutions such as the Accademia di Belle Arti di Macerata and the Società d’Incoraggiamento d’Arti e Mestieri in Milan. I love dialogue, and I love bringing out the best in everyone: it is an ability that comes from painting, from grasping things that others do not see. People come to my atelier with questions and doubts. Some follow paths that last years, others take courses on gold leaf, colour or textile design. Sometimes the journey continues on a personal level, because creating also requires a place: here you can get your hands dirty, meditate, look. For me, being a master means exactly this: sharing knowledge and helping others find their own way of expressing themselves.
