Our interview series continues this week with artist, Daniele de Lorenzo. Enjoy the Q & A along with a selection of Daniele’s work.
Where are you located?
I come from Milan (Italy), but I have been living in Assisi for the last 7 years.
What is your educational background?
I began drawing as a child, self-taught, and for much of my adolescence I did portrait work. Then I studied at the Art Institute of Monza, near Milano.
Which artists, past or present, influence your work most?
The artists who influenced my work at the end of the 80’s and beginning of the 90’s were Italo Calvino and Lucio Battisti. The former is a writer who always fascinated me by the methodology he used. In one period of his life he wrote a series of stories and novels using a combinatory method. In 1985, he was invited to hold 6 lessons at the University of Harvard, but due to his death a posthumous book was produced with the title “American Lessons – six proposals for the next millennium”. In the States perhaps it is translated as “Six Memos for the Next Millennium”. In this book he describes the values that he wishes literature to incarnate in the next millennium, such a Lightness, Speed, Exactness, Visibility, Multiplicity, Coherence. I took from this the basic ideas from which I created my personal method of work. The second artist is Lucio Battisti, the Italian singer-songwriter, who I imagine isn’t so well-known to you as he didn’t have an international impact, probably mostly due to his Italian lyrics. However, in an interview in 1997, David Bowie defined him, together with Lou Reed, as the best singer in the world. In his last artistic period Battisti created 5 albums of experimental music which had little commercial success even in Italy.
Italo Calvino and Lucio Battisti are artists who taught me to focus on the “way” of working and not only on “what” to do, to comprehend the need to have a method, which is more than a tool, a technique or a style. A method is able to incarnate the meaning of your research through its working modalities.
I am very interested in the research of artists such as Brian Eno, Gerhard Richter, Tim Hecker, Jon Hassell and Robert Fripp. There is also an Australian guy, Sam Songailo, who I discovered by accident and whose work I like a lot.
When did you become serious about your work?
In 1992, when I began systematically writing notes about my artistic research, which I then continued to do for about 20 years.
Have you had any breaks in your career that have been a catalyst?
I had a break from 2001 to 2013, a period in which I suspended my artistic activity to dedicate myself to other work. Part of my research was at a dead-end, I remember that I even threw away some of my paintings, then I decided to research in other directions. It was a crucial incubation-period and allowed me to return to my art a few years ago with a new awareness.
What kind of creative patterns, routines or rituals do you have?
The ritual that I almost always use is to enter into a state, and I do this through music, sometimes I use music of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, or Tim Hecker. When I feel that I have reached the state I can start working.
What is your creative process?
After entering into a state that I call “syntonization” I can begin. I am currently working with the square format. I divide it into 108 units per side, in this way creating a finite number of elements: 11,664. Using computer software created by a programmer friend of mine, I put into motion a process within the square in which numerical sequences flow in the space, creating structures and forms. The process, therefore, begins from a programmed calculation using numbers and simple algorithmic calculations. In this phase I am part spectator of the creation, like anyone else. Then I paint on canvas the structures that have been created, and in this phase I alter the sense of order and linearity using random actions such as passing a spatula over the newly-painted surface.
I also produce videos from the software which I add sounds and noises to, creating installations. It is a rather articulated process through which I work within opposing but also complementary worlds, such as chaos and calculation, the unlimited and limited.
Triptych, 2017. from Daniele de Lorenzo on Vimeo.
What do you believe is a key element in creating a good composition?
Mathematics. There are relationships that are objective between form, space, empty and full spaces. Artists have access to these laws without using the “instruction manual”. It is not necessary because they feel it. It is connected to a dimension that is not purely subjective. Indeed, Taste is something objective and not subjective.
How has your style and technique evolved over time?
I began working as a portrait artist, doing life drawing, then when I was very young I was often commissioned portraits from photographs. Then I used tempera and acrylic, but what really excited me, in the 90’s, was xerography. I manipulated images using photocopiers, the first modern technological means that I had available to me, and then I added colour to them. Then I moved to computer work, elaborating the images with photo-retouch software. Today, I use acrylic on canvas and computers to create not only images by also videos.
What are you trying to communicate with your work?
That the artist is just a means, and that it is necessary to enter into this dimension in order to do something useful not only for oneself, but also for the world. I don’t find it useful to project one’s inner impulses onto canvas or onto any other support that is used. So, I’m trying not to pour out myself in my work but to by-pass myself. This requires a certain level of self-regulation, discipline and the awareness that we are not as interesting and original as we imagined we were. We are extraordinary, not in our small-mindedness, but rather in searching for something Else, for example, for the laws that govern ourselves and the reality in which we live and above all that mysterious realm that is everywhere. We must resist our need to be recognized and adulated, which is really something worth very little. This doesn’t mean we can’t wish for success and that I don’t get pleasure from exhibiting my work and from communicating with people. On the contrary, it is even more interesting. Our egocentrism and our vanity can only be justified for a time and only if they bring with them something else, and here I’m not referring once again to ourselves.
In my work there is the idea of the unlimited; a continual recombination of a series of elements, which are always the same, that create an infinite variety of forms for which an entire lifetime wouldn’t be sufficient for me to create all of the possible paintings. I work on a borderline between calculation and chance, mathematics and the mystical world.
What role do you believe art plays in society?
This is a difficult question. Let’s start with the opposite question, “what role does Art not play in society.” I think that Art is not the simple dimension of transferring an idea, of communicating knowledge and above all of simply catalyzing the pain and suffering of the society we live in. Therefore, an artist is not simply someone who provokes and is anti-conformist. It is necessary for the artist to shift their centre of gravity from the need for confirmation and recognition to service of the True, as I mentioned before.
In my opinion, Art, the true kind of Art is a sort of bridge between different dimensions with the aim of showing to the world the Principles that can be generative for those who use them. I don’t want to sound too philosophical, for me it’s actually a very practical question. If I cannot nourish myself from Art at a level that makes me generate a new possibility to define myself and the world, I cannot act in the world in a new way and therefore I cannot be useful to society.
How has the internet influenced the way you market yourself?
Being able to reach anyone directly through their smartphone was something unthinkable until a few years ago. On the one hand this facilitates things, and on the other it requires us to fully understand the language of the different social media in order to communicate effectively through them. Today, I’m working on a series of videos as a way of marketing my work, but everything changes so quickly.
In the age of internet, do you think galleries are still relevant to artists?
Internet has revolutionized many things including the way of marketing art. Internet gives the opportunity to everyone to express themselves. This hyper-connection hasn’t produced the world we hoped for; it has become worse and not better. Andy Warhol said that one day everyone would have 15 minutes of fame. Today, we have arrived at the situation where we have it 24 hours a day, but in this way everything is flat, there is lots of noise, too much noise. This doesn’t mean we should demonize internet, but use it well as a vehicle for the better. Galleries today no longer carry out the role they did in the past. And yet they have a fundamental role to give value to artistic work — distinguishing it from amateur work. Today, however, I think that business and the art market have partly deformed their function. Many galleries have become shops because their artistic product has just become merchandise.
Galleries should return to searching for Art, to being a vehicle for Art, exploring in the world. Like many other artists I am constantly invaded by requests to participate in art competitions, where in many cases it is just a way of making money and offering a poor location.
Today, if we use internet well we can also sell by-passing the galleries, and in some ways I find this very interesting. On the other hand I would also like galleries to be able to become, once again, places where competency acts as a filter in order to present quality and innovation within their walls. Furthermore, the artistic dimension must also be experienced by spectators immersing themselves entirely in a place that allows the meeting and the relationship, also the physical relationship, to take place.
Which creative medium would you love to pursue but haven’t yet?
I haven’t studied music and I would certainly like to very much seeing as it is a form of language that I use a lot, despite not knowing it, as a form of inspiration. Indeed, many of the artists that have influenced me, and that I love, are musicians. Since I was a young child it came naturally to me to “see” music, it’s structure and rhythm. It is as though I see the musical modularity translated into forms.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given as it relates to your work?
Someone told me that in order to go forwards it was necessary to go backwards. This was not only true, but also crucial for my work. I “went back” to painting, to getting my hands dirty, to using “old” modalities. However, by using old methods that I had seemingly already gone beyond in my artistic path with a new awareness it made it possible to redefine everything in a new way.
Do you have any upcoming shows or workshops?
I am currently working on two projects, one titled Square and the other is an exhibition in a music school… perhaps chance doesn’t exist, I always find myself in the musical world…
I would like to offer my sincere gratitude to Daniele for generously sharing his thoughts and perspective with us. To see more of Daniele’s work or follow his latest, visit his website or connect on social media:
