Like a cat in the intimacy of the process, Martina Marzola‘s photographs allow us to enter the studio of Pietro Fachini (Milan, 1994), the artist presented by ArtNoble Gallery on February 8th. With his first solo exhibition, Fachini enters the Milanese art scene with his “tales from feathered lands,” as the title conceived by curator Arnold Braho anticipates. The imaginary is immediately outlined. Stories from other lands, like the natural ones that Fachini uses to paint. Feathered, like the first painting that welcomes the visitor in the gallery. The exhibition path is a succession of “visual meditations,” as the artist describes them, works not generated for people but rather to stimulate their eyes. The corpus of works exhibited by ArtNoble gathers the most recent production, created by Fachini in Sardinia, completely immersed in a cork oak forest, whose patterns, indentations, and rhythms are for him like a tender obsession that repeats itself on every canvas. The exhibition also includes color tests, as well as an archival table containing natural specimens collected directly by Fachini, offering the viewer a real and tangible look into the artist’s journeys between South America and Italy.
The magic system of the forest
Metaphorically delving into the forest frequented by Pietro Fachini, his visceral and intimate relationship with nature becomes immediately clear. «In the woods, you are never alone,» Pietro tells us over coffee, «the forest transforms into another, metaphysical, surreal universe, populated by creatures that one ignores but are there.» By removing man from the center, or rather from above, the artist recognizes his non-solitude and perceives the natural sphere as alive, in motion. Fachini looks at his surroundings through a fairy-tale lens, where everything is animated. «Only those who isolate themselves physically can enter another dimension. When I walk among the cork oaks, they really throw acorns at you; everyone is aware of everyone’s presence. It’s truly a magical system, even though it’s very real. Probably the fact that we are so distant from it makes it seem like a fairy tale. You return to that world that gave birth to you, a world without services.» The cork oaks, with their porous bark, become the undisputed protagonists of his canvases. Their irregular movement absorbs the artist, who transposes every detail with meticulous and instinctive painting. It is instinct that dictates the final form, emerging only at the end, without premeditation. What the artist controls is confined to small imaginary enclosures, within which he has the opportunity and space to perform real exercises in attention that emerge as spontaneous manifestations.
Genesis and epilogue
The exhibition path is delicate and narrative. The cork oaks we discussed earlier are introduced and concluded by two paintings significant to the artist, hanging on opposite walls of the same wall, like two sides of the same coin. “Costanza nel disequilibrio” (Steadiness in Imbalance) and “La crepa” (The Crack). The first depicts a feather resting on a trunk, the second an egg in a nest floating in space. The latter, placed at the end of the path, is, in reality, the genesis of Fachini’s research. It is the result of his period of work with master Maurizio Bottoni and his fascination with the work of surrealists, especially Max Ernst. Remaining incomplete for a long time, Pietro completed it upon his return from his trip to the Amazon, adding the ambiguous crack, either opened by life or broken from the outside. The same journey, the one in Colombia, opened various paths for him. From subverting the perception of time to the study of colors, which he now accomplishes with the help of Professor Marco Fantuzzi, to whom he sends personally collected soils, then converted into pigments.
The body of work presented by ArtNoble is multifaceted, ambiguous, and cryptic. This aspect becomes even more evident in the serially produced monotypes, where the simplicity of this complexity is resolved through meditative practice, deepened during Tagli‘s residency in Stromboli. While the intricate and fluid patterns trigger an enigma on one hand, Pietro Fachini’s intention is clear on the other – to accept the lack of control over things and events. For this reason, he states, «the idea is to generate something that stimulates the human eye, vaguely attempting to propose visual meditations. What you see in my works is exactly what you are looking at; there is nothing else. The extra layer is filled by your experience, but fundamentally, it is nothing more than a spontaneous manifestation.»
Ph Credtis Cover Martina Marzola
Courtesy ArtNoble & Pietro Fachini
