Bitumi (Bitumen)
Works ranging from 1978 and up to 1980
Variable dimensions.
I had decided to stop painting but I had the need to complete some investigations on the surface before moving on to something else. I felt the need to specify the reasons that pushed me out of the “picture”.
I drew figures, automatic shapes, the result of tracing rather than a skill in building bodies. I represented feelings of hanging and being hung, generating silhouettes wrapped in the darkness of an inexpressible depth. I chose materials that were useful to wrap, support, protect and sometimes seal an existential condition. The fragility of the paper was thus contrasted with the reassuring properties of bitumen and shoe cream.
Bitumen, soundproof … a skin that protects against external agents, sounds and corrosion. Bitumen, a material-depth, an idea of sinking and infinite darkness. An existential condition.
Shoe cream to transmute paper into leather, to translate the image of a body into a real body. A cream that softens and humanizes dry, arid and therefore inorganic surfaces.
The whole series of “bitumen” should be refreshed with shoe cream at each exposure.