Interview: Pierluigi Fracassi

December 15th, 2011

Italian artist Pierluigi Fracassi lives Darwin’s theory of natural selection in art and life. His immense talent is winning notice and his insight into man and nature allows him to get right down to the viscera – sometimes literally. At first glance a bit macabre, his haunting, striking pieces are actually an intricate homage to beauty and nature. His latest group show, It’s Time to Say Goodbye, opens this Friday at Galleria Changing Role in Naples. Fracassi spoke to us about the honour of exhibiting at this year’s Venice Biennale, the driving forces behind his art, and giving his grandmother “flowers.”

How did you become an artist?

Art has always been present in my life but it is only recently that I decided to devote myself completely. I believe that being an artist can not be a hobby: it is a full time job that requires lots of energy and sacrifices and with time it returns you huge rewards. Art is like a lover who wants more and more; so, a few years ago I quit my job to begin my studies at the Academy of Fine Arts.

I see you do sculpture, painting, and photography. What is your favourite medium/technique to use?

It is always a matter of time! There are works like “Damn Perfection,” where the baroque console made of ceramic bones took me so long before I finished. It has been a long work (about a year) because I wanted each piece to be made by my hand; it has to be original and not a copy of another one so I made it one by one. At that time sculpture was my favorite medium because it gives you the knowledge of an ancient power of creating something by your hands, from clay. In other works like “Orchids,” the series of self-portraits, the photography with its speed allowed me to capture an idea or a movement that I wouldn’t be able to do with other mediums. So I believe that there’s a strong and inevitable connection between my subjects and the medium I use to build it.

What is it like to be an artist in Italy, surrounded by the great Renaissance masters?

Italy is a beautiful crystal ball, filled with the most beautiful things ever, from the best painters, architects, and poets. What is missing in my country is the “now;” as long as we will not consider the idea that art is not only framed in old golden wood or ancient marble we will not grow up. And considering the cultural issue that we are living now I’m pretty pessimistic about being an artist in Italy. We give so much importance to what there was that sometimes the contemporary scene is obscured by the magnificence of the past.

Where do you get ideas for your art?

Mostly inspiration comes by the observation of human behavior and the perfection of nature. I love to mix intangible and shapeless human moods with the formal perfection of nature. I’m fascinated by Beauty in its various forms and my challenge is to find it in the unexpected places. My research is similar to that of a mathematician and my goal is to demonstrate that beauty can be revealed in any place, at any time and in every way if we could train our mind to look beyond.

Your self-portrait is abstract. What made you represent yourself in this way?

I thought it might be the easiest way at that time to do a little self-analysis. After a big fight with one of my best friend I felt like a selfish guy of 29 years old, that year after year embroiders itself with 29 needles to be just like it would like to be. I guess this is the other side of living with art: I have an altered vision of the world and relationships and I often forget that the world is not only black or white. So the self-portrait was a “mea culpa” to remember that art and life doesn’t stand on the same layer and that comparison is needed for a man who wants to grow.

Can you talk about your use of bones?

I’ve always been interested in the anatomy of the human body: the amount of colours and forms hidden under the skin are a microcosm often unknown. I use archetypal forms and subjects to load my work with a simplicity immediately usable by those who observe it, and bones allow me to speak of man without the risk of straying in subjectivism.

Your art seems morbid, thanks to the skulls, but you make so many connections to living, organic things, blending bones with feathers or leaves.

What is very clear in my work is, without a doubt, the strong connection between man and nature. I fully support the Darwinian theory and as a child I was fascinated by the great respect that this man has always given to nature, a nature that was not just something nice to see or where the men live but something living and changing just like a man. In this way the Darwinian Naturalism influences the hybridity of my work: man is no longer to the top of the chain of evolution but at the same level of nature.

Tell me about one of your newer works, “Naturation.”

Naturation is a consequence to the last answer: silhouettes of insects that are actually composed of a mosaic of leaves stand on a wall as king or queen, framed in glossy cameos almost like winning a hypothetical battle of man versus nature. The boundaries between vegetable and animal kingdoms become blurred in search of a common language that looks to a future of mutations in which man loses the anthropocentric perspective. The light that surrounds them is a cold one, a neon, just like could look the light of a postwar sun and the colours that once were soft and natural are brilliant and phosphorescent now, radioactive and genetically modified.

If you hadn’t chosen art, what would you be doing?

I believe that if I had not started an artistic career now I would be an entomologist or a botanist. I’m fascinated by all the grace that one can find in the natural micro/macro cosmos. The elements that I love to combine all come from the animal and plant world, my research aims to discover the archetypes of the forms and I have always found in nature everything I have needed.

You were involved in the Venice Biennale this year. Can you tell us about the Biennale, and the work you submitted?

A big dream come true…. that’s all I can tell about the Biennale! I always thought that working hard and believing in my dreams could draw me somewhere one day but I didn’t expected so soon. It was a huge gratification to see my work exposed between hundreds of artists I always admired and now, after a few months, I don’t see it as a goal anymore but as a start to the next step. I believe is a kind of responsibility because somehow people trusted my work and me and now it is time to show how much I’m worth. “Damn Perfection” is the work I submitted: a research that concerns limits, intended as physical and emotional extremes, and the race to the state of perfection conceived as coexistence of opposing elements.

What are your long-term goals as an artist?

To restore the concept of beauty and study a new canon that adapts it to the contemporary logic. At the same time I want to pursue my research and extend it to other fields such as music and videos. I believe that hybridization between multiple languages is one of the keys to understanding the world we live in, of which the art must be a consequence and not an escape.

What do you hope your art achieves?

Sincerely I wish that the first reaction of somebody looking at my work could be: “Oh…it’s beautiful!” because that would mean that I reached my goal. I wish I could find a way to make look beautiful what is not considered beautiful in a canonical way. At the same time I want to offer to the viewer an art that is not obtrusive: something that can easily be confused with the furniture of our houses and that slowly makes us reflect about much bigger issues. Last year I gave one of my bones sculptures to my grandmother and to see it hanging on the mantelpiece among the dishes, it’s just wonderful because she keeps thinking that they are flowers!

Interview Darcy Smith