Thanks for working with us on Vehicles For Change.

To begin, how would you introduce your work to someone encountering it for the first time, and what first drew you to quoting real and digital motifs, alongside using objects, as a way to question perception and the human mind?

I work mainly in oil on canvas and paper, mostly in an abstract way. My work starts from an interest in still life and in the deconstruction of objects, but also from close observation of what characterises our present. I collect screenshots, logos and advertising in a personal digital archive and I often make digital collages on my phone. My smartphone is both my sketchbook and my brush. The way I paint sometimes imitates typically digital elements, such as the colours of backlit screens, gradients and repetitions, and the pixel as a brushstroke, as a means of analysing our hybrid reality.

In front of a painting, we usually try to recognise what we already know, to bring things into focus and call them by their name. I am more interested in the wonder of what cannot be named directly, only approached through resemblance, accepting it as true and, through painting, discovering something new about the way we look at things.

Your work often draws motifs from both the real and digital worlds, which are then transformed and deconstructed within a single composition. How do you approach selecting particular motifs, and what guides your decisions when transferring them from source material into paintings?

The first selection of motifs happens through my archive. I always look for forms that carry a certain ambiguity and allow me to make visual and formal associations. However, I work without preparatory drawings, directly on the canvas, so it is the canvas itself that tests and defines how effective my selection is. During this phase I often have to revise and question my choices of composition, colour and so on. Looking at the work plays a central role in my practice.

What more can you tell us about your new pieces on the lorry tarpaulin? Do these works reflect anything in particular for you, be it perception or the visual systems you regularly explore in your practice?

For these works I decided to focus on letters. The theme has always been present in my work, but it has become more prominent in recent months. I am particularly interested in the role of the alphabet, in the deciphering of signs and in their sound component.

Given your interest in the world of objects, how did you find working on the repurposed lorry tarpaulin as an unconventional canvas? Did its original function spark any inspiration for the final piece?

Working on tarpaulin was a lot of fun. I had never worked on a synthetic material before. The surface is much smoother than canvas, and it was interesting to have a different kind of friction with the material. I can’t say whether its original function played a role in the process, but working with letters certainly points to the context of advertising, which is definitely present on the road.

As your practice feels reflective, can these new artworks be read as a reflection of your thoughts on the current condition of the environment?

The condition of the environment was not a central theme in the works for 4BYSIX, but I believe that everything that happens around me influences my work indirectly. To paint is a political matter: whatever I produce is measured against the time and place in which I live and in which my images exist. In the past I used the motif of the cloud as a subject, which has both a technological and an environmental dimension: it is a digital infrastructure and a weather phenomenon at once.

I also find it interesting that in philosophy there is a movement concerned with objects and climate questions. Timothy Morton, for example, belongs to object-oriented thinking and describes climate change as a “hyperobject”: something so massively distributed in time and space that we can never perceive it as a whole, only through its traces, data and local effects. I somehow see a parallel with the way I paint. Both start from the idea that some things cannot be grasped or named directly and can only be approached indirectly, through fragments, signs and resemblance.

Finally, what feels like the next stage for you? Are there new directions or projects you’re beginning to conceptualise in your work?

Lately I have been focusing on small and very small works, smaller than 30 x 30 cm. In recent months I worked a lot on large pieces, about two metres per side. At a smaller scale a sculptural quality emerges that tends to get lost in the larger works. I am also trying to integrate new forms and colours, but I let myself be surprised.