CORVETTO

2022 Milan

SCHALKWIJK

2022 Haarlem

SO36

2019 Berlin

BEEK

2019 Arnhem

KNSM

2018 Amsterdam

PlatformOne

2018 Amsterdam

ISOLA

2017 Milan

AURA

2016 Turku

Civic Pride

2016 Amsterdam

DNH

2015 Den Helder
City Spheres Project

As Dutch Italian artist, I am interested in the unveiled urban identity of European cities. I catch this local sense into City Spheres, painted and cloudy shaped installations of urban reflections.

I create City Spheres to challenge and to plea for the local authenticity of European cities. Authenticity based on diversity and collaboration of local communities. We need more colors and artists in our urban districts. As Europeans, we have to reconsider our position and ‘society’. We should be more aware of the local identity of our place and redefine our local community. Knowing our own local identity is crucial to understand and develop a more connected society (as a social, political and cultural system).

I am an activist, I paint and challenge to reflect on the community we (want to) live in. During a short artist-in-residency, I explore the urban identity of a specific district and paint the Genius Loci of it into a unique City Sphere. At the start, I am completely displaced in this new surrounding. I work non-stop for a few weeks, it’s a painting marathon on the spot. Through friction, actions, and curiosity I sense and paint the local Genius Loci.

Each City Sphere installation is a time-based image of an European urban area. Made with a mixed-technique on linen. I start with local fluor colors, they boycott all my rational plans and push me to an intuitive way of painting. On top I use tonal oil colors, to obtain colored abstractions of the sense of a specific place. Each City Sphere is made out of small painted ‘witnesses’ with urban heritage (monuments, culture, architecture) and special inhabitants, I call them the ‘local knights’.

I started out in 2015 in Den Helder. Then I worked in Amsterdam (the Bijlmer, Zuidas, KNSM), Arnhem (NL), Turku (Fin), Milan(I) and Berlin(D).

City Spheres is inspired on the triology Spheres by the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. “The question of where we are is more meaningful than ever and more important than the question of what we are. We need to focus on the place that people create to be who they are. This place I have given the name Atmosphere. Spheres are space creations they act as an immune system. They include and exclude.“

Under pdf you find the City Spheres catalogue. Click on the pictures above to see all the City Spheres works.

city spheres