Stopping Time and Memory Through His PolaWorks. Interview with Visual Artist Paolo Angelucci
Part of his production is the result of a long experimentation with pure silver gelatine. From Italy
Tell us what you do and your beginnings.
As a child, I was the home photographer. I had a Yashica FX-3 2000 and dreamed of having a painter's easel; in 1999, I bought my first photographic enlarger at a flea market.
My first darkroom was in an empty office that some friends made available: I had everything I needed to print, and even a painter's easel. In that place, I saw the image slowly appear from the bottom of the tray for the first time, under the red light, like a memory swallowed by the sea.
From that moment on, I never stopped loving photography. I began to spend the nights printing, and soon my goal became to make photography a unique work, far from mass reproducibility. In 2006, I took my first Polaroids and in 2011 I was a tester for the Impossible Project instant films.
In 2007 I photographed my breath, in 2008 I made my first black and white photographic emulsion and in 2018 I developed a personal printing technique bringing photography closer to sculpture.
What does your work aim to say?
My work is a visual journey that goes beyond appearance. Photography, for me, is a tool to evoke what is not immediately visible, to explore what lies behind the surface. I like to compare this process to crossing a mountain pass, I like to push myself beyond the boundary between the visible and the invisible.
What I want to communicate through images is the essence of time that flows within us, capturing the infinite details that often escape the everyday gaze. Details that make everything unique, learning to observe to discover beauty and uniqueness. My work is an invitation to look with new eyes, to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Where do you find inspiration for your art?
My work is born mainly from the careful observation of the context that surrounds me, from nature, and from the emotional connections that I establish with it. For example, I can decide to tell the story of the mountain where I come from, which I have always seen as a limit to reach, as in the Maiella project.
Or I can be inspired by everyday situations, as in my work Call Me, born during the activities of a call center, where I combined drawing and video.
Could you give us some insight into your creative process?
The birth of a new work is a very long process, while the realization depends on a case-by-case basis. I usually analyze a particular experience or a particular emotional state that I try to describe and share through the creation of my works.
I choose the photographic medium for its adherence to reality, to capture an element that in turn has captured my aesthetic and emotional attention, and then work on the intangible and emotional part of it.
The moment in which the two things merge is like creating a puzzle whose pieces are already in my mind, but which must be found and ordered.
Finally, light often returns to being an essential element even in the installation phase to which I dedicate a lot of attention, I usually darken the environment that hosts my works, totally reconfiguring the lighting with lights designed for each piece exhibited.
What are your future projects?
In the future, I will continue to have fun. My path is never a point of arrival, but a continuous evolution, in which fun and curiosity are always at the center of every new project.
Interview by Fabio Pariante, X • Instagram • Website