Photos paintings Ugo Dalla Porta
INTERVIEW WITH LARA ILARIA BRACONI
by Vera Canevazzi and Caterina Frulloni
1) Where do you live, where have you lived and where would you like to live?
I live in Milan. I have lived in Montignoso, Carrara, Prague, Warsaw, Turin, Stockholm. I would like to live for a while in Greenland and New Zealand; in general, wherever painting takes me.
2) What do you think is the most significant work of art of the last 20 years and why?
In October 2020 I encountered the work "Where we are going" by Chiharu Shiota at the Fondazione Merz in Turin during the exhibition "Push the limits". I had the impression of being under a big question: a set of 150 floating boats made of wire, so light and almost impalpable, suspended in space. An idea of a white waterfall that never reaches the ground, punctuated by the black contours of the boats. I felt like being under the Milky Way, lost and completely enveloped; I would have liked to be in the middle of it.
3) Which are in your opinion the three most interesting emerging artists at the moment?
I find myself in tune with the work of Daisy Parris, an American artist, who loves painting and is making her life a continuous painting; there is in her a radical and cavernous necessity, which moves from abstract expressionism to pop, very swag. I follow with great interest the work of Luca dal Vignale, an Italian artist currently living in Belgium, in whose research he assembles different fabrics and materials, obtaining specific visions of passage, as if every detail of the material could tell infinite stories or bring multiple visions through its appearance. Recently I came into contact with the work of Teresa Antignani, an Italian artist who makes reuse the main practice of her making and thinking of life and art. A dense body that breathes, scraps that come back to life, mix, erupt and recompose in a visual song.
4) What are your critical reference texts?
I am currently reading Maurice Blanchot's "Le parole quotidienne", the writings of Yves Klein, Knut Hamsun's "Pan", Leonora Carrington's "Down at the Bottom", Heidegger's "Being and Time", the writings of Monet, T.G.E Powell's "The Celts", the writings of Domenico Gnoli, the science fiction anthology "The Wonders of the Possible" and Einstein's "How I See the World".
5) Where and how do you work? Do you need certain conditions to enter the creative process?
I work mainly in the studio, but I can work anywhere, indoors and outdoors. I don't need any particular conditions, every moment can be the moment, a kairòs, so to speak. The more I go on, the more I understand that my body has to be healthy and I have to be well in order to fully return all that I absorb.
6) Do you work instinctively or do you plan your works in advance?
I work from inside the painting. Thought is before and after. The work moves from the material, it speaks to me and returns to the material.
7) What role does the invisible play in your production?
What would we ever be without the help of what does not exist? Paul Valery writes: "It is almost impossible to separate from our spirit that which is not there. What then would we ever be without the help of what does not exist? Very little, and our unemployed spirits would languish if the fables, misunderstandings, abstractions, beliefs and monsters, hypotheses and self-styled problems of metaphysics did not populate our abysses and natural darkness with beings and images without objects. Myths are the souls of our actions and loves. We can only act by moving towards a phantom. We can only love what we create."

Courtesy Lorenzo Vatalaro Gallery
