-When did you start with this works and why?
The reason? It was normal for me. I started when I was very young, as soon as I learned how to write; my tools were pencils, markers and my first wall was my bedroom's, no authority in uniform would have caught me there obviously, but I can clearly remember my mother’s reaction, because it was a wallpaper covered wall that would have been very difficult to fix just with paint. Nothing could have predicted this performance to her, but it was normal and inevitable for me. I drew on the purse, the school desk, the shoes, the trousers, my little brother’s arms, and on myself. The content of this first-primitive-instinctive activity were the very first words I learned: my name and surname, some animal name, some figurative elements, things I saw around me in the city where I’ve grown up (Turin) and obviously the human figure, a stereotype, a cliché that I still sketch and that I entrust to perform different themes and various animate scenes and settings.
-Do you have some iconical characters that you prefer representing while painting?
As I said, the recurring subject is the essential human figure, often out of proportion but with simple and roundish features, three- dimensional, sometimes with faces without eyes nor ears, wearing tight-fitting dresses, suits and bowlers while they perform actions like cycling, juggling, greeting, playing cards, eating; or in large groups standing like they are posing for a picture, which can recall surreal deportations; or while they are lying asleeping, dreaming and unaware.
-What is your ideal setting?
I remember that, especially in my first excursions, I often “striked” call boxes, transformer rooms, metal boxes and street furnitures that could cut off the space like a frame, a window from which you could see another world animated by those puppets. Then, sizes increased and today I prefer walls in disrepair, so that I can draw attention to the contrasts and point out places that seems to be static, but where, after I painted, something often changes. They can be places in the city centre or in the suburbs, populated or in the middle of nowhere, far from everything, and open landscapes too, like ports or abandoned suburbans structures or along the railway.
-Can you tell us the difference between street art, graffiti and wall painting? Have you been influenced by some of these inclination?
Yes, I could! But those are just notions that don’t define me. I think that the core of it should always be a valuable work, and then to understand the context you are working in and that whatever you are in a urban environment or not, in preexisting structures or in a uncontaminated place, whatever you are using images, inscrutable writing, every kind of paint, non pictorial material, sculpture or (and that’s difficult) repositioning raw stones, well, all of these don’t really matter, because every tendency and practice that has been created and developed over time, it’s just a language, a tool that the artist may use to shape his poetics.
-How much have you been influenced by the 20th Century art movements, especially Futurism?
The avant-garde influenced everything, it is well integrated and used as an excuses for every kind of product, of both high or low quality. It made the forms of expression richer, and every aspect of the production of art can relate to that; what fascinates me the most is that the creation is often left to others and what matters in the end is the idea and not the virtuosity. That’s why I often use volunteers that want to experiment with murales and painting on big canvas. I don’t worry at all, I think it is normal, for example Ready-Mades were very clear about it. I don’t think that Futurism influenced me more than others.
