Cabinet de desseins
Collages are generally composed of three components: a newspaper photo, a text and some kind of artwork composition. The relationship between the three components is shaped by their physical proximity and closeness in time. As the product of different readings, the text itself sets up as open a relationship as possible with the image and the composition in consideration, without any prior intention to create or convey a precise message. Based on the premise that any relationship between image and text automatically creates meaning—even the most absurd or unexpected ones—the underlying intention in a collage is to broaden this semantic relationship to the full.
The three components are put together in a swift session, where the compulsive composition work contrasts with the slow sedimentation of the texts and painted newspaper pages. The sources of the texts are omitted or deliberately concealed to avoid referring to any authority, as there would be in a quotation. The used newspaper pages recall common press formats, the colours are employed in uniform shades, the paint is applied without any particular expression. The inherent discontinuity in the collage technique enhances the power of texts, words, to signify the absence of objects, the things they refer to. These characteristics—swiftly made with immediate, transparent strokes—define them as a practice similar to drawing or disegno.
The more collages I make, the more the result appears to be a kind of diary of thoughts, a diary of everything underlying my art work, thoughts on forms and concepts by an artist who questions certain abstractions of painting. The reasons that led me to eschew the use of images in my painting, to confine it, to systemise the strokes that make it up, to think about its devices, may well be visible in this somewhat multifarious set of works. The polysemy from the collage and its accretion would then become a mental image of the negative of the painting, the hidden face of the work.