Our interview with the Italian artist Sergio Padovani
N.:
-As opposed to the “plastic” art of painting, music has no form or obvious way that captures the space and / or time, forming a kind of monument of the inner attitude of the artist. As you submit, your art had a musical embodiment in the beginning and only later it was applied on the canvas. How did you manage to “grope” a visual side of your art and what was the reason for it? Sergio:
-That is true, music has been and still it’s very important for me. I was definitely interested by the composition, whereas the live performance, where the exhibition embodies other aspects and where the repetition becomes the rule, moved to the background. Years later different musical experiments, I have understood that I had to change the approach to artistic communication and therefore, thanks to a casual meeting with Odilon Redon’s painting, I decided to “explore” the painting, where the compositional aspect is total, while the one of the exhibition is, for me, completely void. The perfect solution. The passage between an artistic language and the other one has been extremely natural and fluid…After all, I exactly paint as I play, in research and improvisation, also considering the silences, the noise as a sound. I think each framework has its own sound, that changes and evolves as the canvas evolves. N.:
-Do you agree with the statement that person is able to see in art only that is initially opened (available) for his perception? In other words, can a person who initially isn’t predisposed to the dark sides of existence, to penetrate into monstrous depth and despair that your works exude? Sergio:
-I believe that my paintings represent not only the dark and heavy world’s disharmony , but also happy disharmony of daily lives. I think that each darkness has light inside itself and vice versa…. it’s important that we do not limit the nature of this condition through the adjectives “positive” and “negative” .This long prologue because I believe that everyone, even the most distant person from the inspiring spirit of my work, can find something that recognizes, something who knows. Painting of the past has taught us what man is and does, in his majesty and in his desperation without reductions… Just think about masters as Bosch, Bruegel, Van Der Weiden and many others. It’s an important key, for me, to not forget their great example and maintain the tradition.
N.:
-Do you consider yourself as a medium or guide, meaning that your brush is controlled by some of higher power? How the creative process goes generally? And in this connection there is another question: How religious are you? Sergio:
-No, absolutely, any kind of guide or power of control … I act quite simply, by channeling all my cultural backgrounds, all my influences and all the conditions of my working time in a direction. A way to find, after an hard working time, a common sense of all this path. This is the subject and the storytelling of the painting .I act instinctively in front of a naked canvas … starting to paint until I do not recognize an image. The only rule is to follow without repentance the “foetus image” that I perceive in the canvas. No, I’m not religious, but I totally respect the religious aesthetic and its narrative creation. Pictorial themes chained to religion are eternal, therefore it would be impossible for me not exalt them … and then the ancient churches are magnificent places. N.:
-How your technical skills are important for you? Do you have an art education? Sergio:
-Painting technique is essential …. it allows the research, encodes and replaces all the mental inputs needing to complete a work. I had not training, I simply observed and translated what I saw into pictures, according to My aesthetic and technical solutions. Everyday I work on my specific way of painting to improve and speed up the performance of each aspect of my work. I personally believe that art should not be taught in accordance with precise terms and laws … everyone has to find its way to arrive from there to the essence. N.:
-I can not but agree with you, but let me clarify the following. You consider that an art should not be taught according to strict requirements and laws. Does it mean, that technical skill, as such, quite lends itself to “self-education” and, in that case, has an infinite variety of manifestations? Of course, it could be on the condition, that the person, who creates art, longs to be completely absorbed by it and consequently, achieve the absolute, doesn`t he? Sergio:
-I believe that there is an own, unique and unrepeatable technique, that every true artist must employ all his life to find it. If he uses the rules that others give to you(to find out the meaning of what you are looking for)what you’ll find it will never be totally YOUR language. I don’t deny, obviously, that is important to study the techniques of painting by a teacher, the world of Art moves in this way from…ever! But…I think, if you want to do a much deeper research than the realization of an image, out from the concept of painting in general, you must be more daring, … searching through errors the ideal techniques to know your path. This path is a secret road in an imaginary forest for every artist….I think that it’s important to use own legs to walk throughout this forest! In this sense the artist has to sacrifice himself completely to research and perhaps one day, or perhaps never, will appear the real absolute. Its own absolute! N.:
-May be, it will be a strange question, but I can’t not ask. Do you think that art is aging along with the world in his wisdom and anger? The more the world becomes older, the more sophisticated, the more cruel and disgusting becomes its art, as if it tries to dig a little deeper this old grave. What do you think about it? Sergio:
-I partly agree … art, for me, is now turning on itself, reinventing styles and solutions shuffled and fed to an audience that has no desire to meditate.This total digitization (first photograph) has castrated a slow and often full of failures working path, but that led to identify with the work done. Nowadays it takes a few minutes to finish an artwork and to self-consider, therefore, an artist … .I believe we need to go back and just consider art what is not fruitless entertainment, but growth for our society. I think is useless to propose, endlessly, Wharol or to imitate Marina Abhramovic …. we risk not to give air anymore to “knowledge’s bellows”.In 500 years we will still speak about Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and other artists like them, there’s no doubt. That is Art in “her” fiscal immortality. N.:
-Your pictures bring me back to my childhood. When my heart was very innocent, and was able to absorb all new. Once again, I feel a new feeling, which is not a pleasant now. It reminds me of death. It declares my death and the death of all that what can be important for a person. How it would be fair to say that in your works death is embodied,which is the crown of life? I mean death as an absolute concentration or sorrow, not necessarily the destruction. Sergio:
-It’s interesting what you say …. I thank you. Death, indeed, it is a necessary aspect to the life and, in a sense, the child is more closer to it than meets the eye. I mean that the relationship of the infancy with the death is much more natural and communicative … adults transmit the fear. To inoculate the baby’s head that death is pain and sadness. In effects the death’s feeling is the reason that drives us to live and to research and improve every day more … is the concept of the end of something that gives us the urge to start a route. Anyway, nothing is really lost, nothing dies … it’s just transformation of the elements … as we transform ourselves in life, we are transformed by the death .My characters always have the deadly aura to their sides, but, despite that, they seek their inadequate and unattainable happiness. Just like us. N.:
-So, let’s wander off the point. What is a society for you? Do you accept it, which it is, or do you strive to convey to individuals the ideas that would later become the key to liberation or punishment for them? How are you sensitive to criticism, when someone with an important expression allegedly tries to analyze in detail the work of art, trying to classify and give supposedly intelligible explanation to details? Sergio:
-Art has been sense of reality, of society and individual forever. It’s therefore a fact that I also use my medium to narrate what I see. Society is an hard concept…..difficult to be considered as real. It’s also difficult to realize to be a part of it.I accept the idea of sharing among men in full agreement and compliance, but I deny the idea of what the society has become nowadays. We not only see the loss of respect for human lives but also the deceptions and violences that our own power’s representatives continue to perpetrate, lying, covering up, manipulating with half-truths and denying the evidences.I think it is important, for every living being, to rationally think and to encode the path that society is forcing us to follow. If we want to learn how to understand and unmask, where necessary, the system and the “accommodation company”, we have to inquire, to study and to doubt. As a painter I merge my way of thinking in my paintings and inevitably, I tie them to my critical and analyzer being. N.:
-In any case, we are still human. And just like everyone share human needs, and we live in this uncertainty, in his eternal quest for reality, and I am not afraid of the word – comfort. Sometimes the price is extremely high and we have completely exhausted, when suddenly there comes a quiet moment of intense tranquility, which is a break before continuing the path. In this case, clearly felt the oppressive burden of inner demon, who strongly wants to break out and appear here – in this human world, for giving place for the new evil demon gnawing heart. This madness and chaos, that possibly occasionally and briefly can give a breathing space to start their new, more severe test. How do you manage not to lose self-control in this mad dance of existence? Is there some kind of activity, which, by the way, can not touch the metaphysical spheres, and is a kind of bulwark for the repose of the artist? Sergio:
-Those who work with their own art “round the clock” know that it’s impossible to find a sort of rest or real calm. This is the concept of the Ouroboros, the snake biting its own tail … doing art is heaven and hell at the same time .I have sacrificed my life to painting, it gives me the strength to live and to never lose control, but only because it is the same strength that eats me up inside every minute of every day. There are so many things that can give a sort of relief to those who live by and with the paintings, but none of these will ever compare. Painting is my life and my life is painting.
Until death.
Aesthetics of Devastation / Sergio Padovani. (30.12.2014)
-As opposed to the “plastic” art of painting, music has no form or obvious way that captures the space and / or time, forming a kind of monument of the inner attitude of the artist. As you submit, your art had a musical embodiment in the beginning and only later it was applied on the canvas. How did you manage to “grope” a visual side of your art and what was the reason for it? Sergio:
-That is true, music has been and still it’s very important for me. I was definitely interested by the composition, whereas the live performance, where the exhibition embodies other aspects and where the repetition becomes the rule, moved to the background. Years later different musical experiments, I have understood that I had to change the approach to artistic communication and therefore, thanks to a casual meeting with Odilon Redon’s painting, I decided to “explore” the painting, where the compositional aspect is total, while the one of the exhibition is, for me, completely void. The perfect solution. The passage between an artistic language and the other one has been extremely natural and fluid…After all, I exactly paint as I play, in research and improvisation, also considering the silences, the noise as a sound. I think each framework has its own sound, that changes and evolves as the canvas evolves. N.:
-Do you agree with the statement that person is able to see in art only that is initially opened (available) for his perception? In other words, can a person who initially isn’t predisposed to the dark sides of existence, to penetrate into monstrous depth and despair that your works exude? Sergio:
-I believe that my paintings represent not only the dark and heavy world’s disharmony , but also happy disharmony of daily lives. I think that each darkness has light inside itself and vice versa…. it’s important that we do not limit the nature of this condition through the adjectives “positive” and “negative” .This long prologue because I believe that everyone, even the most distant person from the inspiring spirit of my work, can find something that recognizes, something who knows. Painting of the past has taught us what man is and does, in his majesty and in his desperation without reductions… Just think about masters as Bosch, Bruegel, Van Der Weiden and many others. It’s an important key, for me, to not forget their great example and maintain the tradition.
N.:
-Do you consider yourself as a medium or guide, meaning that your brush is controlled by some of higher power? How the creative process goes generally? And in this connection there is another question: How religious are you? Sergio:
-No, absolutely, any kind of guide or power of control … I act quite simply, by channeling all my cultural backgrounds, all my influences and all the conditions of my working time in a direction. A way to find, after an hard working time, a common sense of all this path. This is the subject and the storytelling of the painting .I act instinctively in front of a naked canvas … starting to paint until I do not recognize an image. The only rule is to follow without repentance the “foetus image” that I perceive in the canvas. No, I’m not religious, but I totally respect the religious aesthetic and its narrative creation. Pictorial themes chained to religion are eternal, therefore it would be impossible for me not exalt them … and then the ancient churches are magnificent places. N.:
-How your technical skills are important for you? Do you have an art education? Sergio:
-Painting technique is essential …. it allows the research, encodes and replaces all the mental inputs needing to complete a work. I had not training, I simply observed and translated what I saw into pictures, according to My aesthetic and technical solutions. Everyday I work on my specific way of painting to improve and speed up the performance of each aspect of my work. I personally believe that art should not be taught in accordance with precise terms and laws … everyone has to find its way to arrive from there to the essence. N.:
-I can not but agree with you, but let me clarify the following. You consider that an art should not be taught according to strict requirements and laws. Does it mean, that technical skill, as such, quite lends itself to “self-education” and, in that case, has an infinite variety of manifestations? Of course, it could be on the condition, that the person, who creates art, longs to be completely absorbed by it and consequently, achieve the absolute, doesn`t he? Sergio:
-I believe that there is an own, unique and unrepeatable technique, that every true artist must employ all his life to find it. If he uses the rules that others give to you(to find out the meaning of what you are looking for)what you’ll find it will never be totally YOUR language. I don’t deny, obviously, that is important to study the techniques of painting by a teacher, the world of Art moves in this way from…ever! But…I think, if you want to do a much deeper research than the realization of an image, out from the concept of painting in general, you must be more daring, … searching through errors the ideal techniques to know your path. This path is a secret road in an imaginary forest for every artist….I think that it’s important to use own legs to walk throughout this forest! In this sense the artist has to sacrifice himself completely to research and perhaps one day, or perhaps never, will appear the real absolute. Its own absolute! N.:
-May be, it will be a strange question, but I can’t not ask. Do you think that art is aging along with the world in his wisdom and anger? The more the world becomes older, the more sophisticated, the more cruel and disgusting becomes its art, as if it tries to dig a little deeper this old grave. What do you think about it? Sergio:
-I partly agree … art, for me, is now turning on itself, reinventing styles and solutions shuffled and fed to an audience that has no desire to meditate.This total digitization (first photograph) has castrated a slow and often full of failures working path, but that led to identify with the work done. Nowadays it takes a few minutes to finish an artwork and to self-consider, therefore, an artist … .I believe we need to go back and just consider art what is not fruitless entertainment, but growth for our society. I think is useless to propose, endlessly, Wharol or to imitate Marina Abhramovic …. we risk not to give air anymore to “knowledge’s bellows”.In 500 years we will still speak about Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and other artists like them, there’s no doubt. That is Art in “her” fiscal immortality. N.:
-Your pictures bring me back to my childhood. When my heart was very innocent, and was able to absorb all new. Once again, I feel a new feeling, which is not a pleasant now. It reminds me of death. It declares my death and the death of all that what can be important for a person. How it would be fair to say that in your works death is embodied,which is the crown of life? I mean death as an absolute concentration or sorrow, not necessarily the destruction. Sergio:
-It’s interesting what you say …. I thank you. Death, indeed, it is a necessary aspect to the life and, in a sense, the child is more closer to it than meets the eye. I mean that the relationship of the infancy with the death is much more natural and communicative … adults transmit the fear. To inoculate the baby’s head that death is pain and sadness. In effects the death’s feeling is the reason that drives us to live and to research and improve every day more … is the concept of the end of something that gives us the urge to start a route. Anyway, nothing is really lost, nothing dies … it’s just transformation of the elements … as we transform ourselves in life, we are transformed by the death .My characters always have the deadly aura to their sides, but, despite that, they seek their inadequate and unattainable happiness. Just like us. N.:
-So, let’s wander off the point. What is a society for you? Do you accept it, which it is, or do you strive to convey to individuals the ideas that would later become the key to liberation or punishment for them? How are you sensitive to criticism, when someone with an important expression allegedly tries to analyze in detail the work of art, trying to classify and give supposedly intelligible explanation to details? Sergio:
-Art has been sense of reality, of society and individual forever. It’s therefore a fact that I also use my medium to narrate what I see. Society is an hard concept…..difficult to be considered as real. It’s also difficult to realize to be a part of it.I accept the idea of sharing among men in full agreement and compliance, but I deny the idea of what the society has become nowadays. We not only see the loss of respect for human lives but also the deceptions and violences that our own power’s representatives continue to perpetrate, lying, covering up, manipulating with half-truths and denying the evidences.I think it is important, for every living being, to rationally think and to encode the path that society is forcing us to follow. If we want to learn how to understand and unmask, where necessary, the system and the “accommodation company”, we have to inquire, to study and to doubt. As a painter I merge my way of thinking in my paintings and inevitably, I tie them to my critical and analyzer being. N.:
-In any case, we are still human. And just like everyone share human needs, and we live in this uncertainty, in his eternal quest for reality, and I am not afraid of the word – comfort. Sometimes the price is extremely high and we have completely exhausted, when suddenly there comes a quiet moment of intense tranquility, which is a break before continuing the path. In this case, clearly felt the oppressive burden of inner demon, who strongly wants to break out and appear here – in this human world, for giving place for the new evil demon gnawing heart. This madness and chaos, that possibly occasionally and briefly can give a breathing space to start their new, more severe test. How do you manage not to lose self-control in this mad dance of existence? Is there some kind of activity, which, by the way, can not touch the metaphysical spheres, and is a kind of bulwark for the repose of the artist? Sergio:
-Those who work with their own art “round the clock” know that it’s impossible to find a sort of rest or real calm. This is the concept of the Ouroboros, the snake biting its own tail … doing art is heaven and hell at the same time .I have sacrificed my life to painting, it gives me the strength to live and to never lose control, but only because it is the same strength that eats me up inside every minute of every day. There are so many things that can give a sort of relief to those who live by and with the paintings, but none of these will ever compare. Painting is my life and my life is painting.
Until death.
Aesthetics of Devastation / Sergio Padovani. (30.12.2014)
LINK:
http://aesthetics-of-devastation.com/reflections.html
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