PORTFOLIO

Latvia

The work is the result of the artistic residency held at the Mark Rothko Art Center in Daugavpils in Latvia. In my three-week stay in the region I had the opportunity to explore the local places and culture strongly influenced by the past Soviet occupation. The dominant culture of the former Soviet empire has almost erased the identity of a country and the population who still find themselves divided in their identity between Latvian citizens and non-citizens (nepilsoņi), mainly Russian-speaking, who were stuck in the passage from the USSR to independence. This cultural and social gap is mainly noticeable between the capital Riga, westernized and modernized in its aesthetics, and Daugavpils, the second city after Riga in terms of importance and population. Located to the east, a few kilometers from Belarus, Daugavpils’ population is predominantly Russian-speaking and the urban architecture has remained Soviet-style.
In light of this wealth of contrasts, accentuated by the current Russian geopolitical situation, I decided to engrave a social map of Latvia. The work is generated by fifteen etched zinc matrices divided into two series inked with two different colours, the combined printing of the matrices produces an overlap of signs that outline a graph of the region, as I saw it through my eyes and those of the person who told it to me.

Agglomerato

The installation consists of ten etchings made out of reduction print matrix: there is only one matrix, and the prints obtained from it are snapshots of the different phases of engraving. This means that to obtain the second print, the matrix from which the first is made must be altered. Same goes for the third and for all others. Due to this technical peculiarity, there is only one print of each state of process.

The work reflects on change as a synonym of vitality through this alternation of destruction and creation.

Passaggi

A project realized togheter with the artist Paola Lucrezi.
Opening, swiping, penetrating and at the same time overlaying.
Whilst creating this book we reimagined Val Camonica, a place set between the mountains, with precision and consistancy. The book is a visual retelling of a the landscape that was exposed to and changed by natural elements. A new passage divides fragments of the landscape, what used to be the same is now rearranged and reordered. Different parts become more pronounced demomonstrating wìthin the print what gives the landscape its unique characterisctics.
It is interesting the look at the city of Bienno and the Borgo Artisti association in a similar way. Like the landscape, the residency hosted by the Borgo artisti association has also been a place of crossroads, where multiple disciplines and realities come together. It is unique in that it is a site where of many artists have, like us, been welcomed to respond to the space in a collaborative and expansive manner.

Di qua quel che so,

di là quel che aspetto.

A separarli, la linea

che dalla punta

dell’occhio raggiunge

la punta delle dita,

linea che barrica,

che invita, come

il dente del pettine

corre tra i capelli

a separarli in ciocche.

Natura tra le nature,

in mezzo all’atto

nuovo del ricordare

la sua malattia,

la dimenticanza

Paola Lucrezi | Marco Poma, 2021
Letterpress artist book printed and bound by hand, published in five copies, numbered and signed, on the occasion of the artist’s residency at the Borgo Artisti Association (Bienno, Italy) and Il Segno Tipografico in August 2021.
Text by Paola Lucrezi, engravings by Paola Lucrezi and Marco Poma.

Architettura Mobile

This project was realized during the metal welding workshop part of my Erasmus residency in Valencia at the UPV - Universidad Politecnica de Valencia. The intention of the work is to give three-dimensional shape to the concept of architecture expressed in my engravings.
With this mobile sculpture, I wanted to explore my interest in textures in more depth, spefically looking at cracks. I am interested in the juxtaposition of natural and artificial. The sculpture (being man-made) and the cracks (forming naturally), allowed me to create a space in which the two can be at play together. The decision to illuminate the interior of the sculpture not only highlights the presence and shape of the cracks, but above all invites us to observe what is beyond them, revealing the heart that lies behind the superficial armor. The elements on which the main structure rests are articulated as legs, emphasizing how, through the openings to the outside, the individual becomes capable of taking steps, of exploring and knowing.

Valencia, 2017
Recycled iron, led lamp

Per la strada ritonda ch'è infinita

A project realized togheter with the artist Paola Lucrezi.
The central hall of Casa Valiga, a Renaissance House located in a city inside the vale of Val Camonica, is decorated with frescoes inspired by Petrarch’s Triumphs. During the 2021 Artist Residence, the Borgo Artisti Association invited guest artists to set up a site-specific exhibition, with the aim of creating a dialogue between the contemporary and the history of the Renaissance House.
“Per la strada ritonda ch’è infinita” is a work born in collaboration with Marialuna, an artist specialized in making hand-made paper and taken from Il Trionfo del Tempo. Here, The Sun, indignant at seeing how Man’s fame seems to transcend the limits of his mortal life, decides to speed up the course of time to favor the oblivion of human glories.
The installation, which was showcased for three weeks, shows the corrosion process of a zinc plate treated with the aquatint technique.
As a result of the chemical transformation of zinc, the etching in saline solution produces waste in the form of powder . This waste has been collected over a period of time. Marialuna, through an oxidation process, has created a precious artisan paper with iridescent and colorful shades from this waste.
The eroded matrix was cleaned and put on display. Finally, this matrix was removed and replaced by its trace, imprinted on the paper by press printing.

Paola Lucrezi | Marco Poma, 2021
Site specific installation (zinc, nylon, plexiglass, iron, copper powder, hand-made paper)

Perda e Trigu

The work was created at the Casa Falconieri Institution in Dolianova in the province of Cagliari through the Contemporary Printmaking Award dedicated to Enzo di Martino. The residency, lasting one week, focused on the production of a chalcographic work inside the Atelier of the artist Gabriella Locci.

Starting from a research on the territory in the Campidanese area, days before the start of the residency, I focused on the exploration of places of historical and landscape interest; I therefore created an engraving dedicated to Sardinia.

The wind that passes through it, the rock that traces its memory and the colors that cover it, especially in the month of May, are more vivid and constantly change with the first storms. With these notes I have generated an emotional, gestural and dynamic work that aims to represent the nature and architecture of this land in the passage of time. "Perda e trigu" translated from Campidanese means stone and wheat, elements that in the Sardinian rural landscape are characteristic of all the peoples who have lived on the island.

The work was engraved on three copper plates with drypoint and wash, the modular format allowed me to create a larger work that could emphasize the gestural signs and provide greater immersion in the landscape subject represented. The wash was made with copper sulphate to give an atmosphere to the main subject while the choice of colors, both of the signs and of the background, are sought after by the most symbolic colors of the Sardinian land.

At the end of the residency, a variable edition was created characterized by different shades of ink while the matrices were crossed out in order to increase the uniqueness of the work.

SUL FILO

A book is a strange entity: when it rests, it is closed like a body; if questioned, it offers itself, it exposes itself. A book of copperplate engravings is even stranger, and, when questioned, it does not say, but indicates: it signals.
In the laboratories of the Opificio della Rosa, with the precious guidance of Umberto Giovannini, we questioned ourselves precisely on this quality of making books and making engravings.
Both purposes are immersed in the dragging of a song that is the result of a multitude of voices and experiences; in this song, we tried to be an additional voice.
Looking out from the depths of very different imaginaries, we sought solutions to harmonize our voices without altering their timbre; as in the act of overdubbing a tape, we worked on the overlapping, on the repetition of gestures, paths, voices.
The poem that completes the book wants to add a commentary on the feeling of this insertion into the furrow of already traced roads, which nevertheless always reveal themselves to be new, surprising and risky.

Artist's book by Paola Lucrezi and Marco Poma
With four chalcographic engravings and typographic texts with movable type
Poetry by Paola Lucrezi
Made and printed in 15 numbered and signed copies at Opificio della rosa
Special thanks to Umberto Giovannini, Maria Pina Bentivenga and Jacopo Nanni Bartolucci

Guanlan Printmaking Village

From August 26 to September 26, I was hosted at the Printmaking Village in Guanlan, a district of the city of Shenzhen, in southern coastal China.
The aim of the Center is to connect different cultures and knowledge, through the invitation of artists selected by the board of the China Printmaking Museum; the hospitality and generous availability of means and resources offered by the Center encourages each artist to work to the best of their ability.
My goal, on the other hand, was to test myself in a new environment. In such a distant and different land, there are many obstacles: the climate, the language, the society, the different culture and the high expectations on both sides have made this month more intense than ever.

The climatic situation in Shenzhen particularly struck me, so much so that it inspired my work: the inhabitants of Shenzhen are used to "extreme" weather events, or what would seem so to anyone coming from a Mediterranean climate. The subtropical climate in the summer is accompanied by high humidity (often above 90%), typhoons and monsoons. The two works that I created during my stay at the Center give shape to the impressions that the climatic power of the country has produced in me.
The work "Taifeng" is inspired by Typhoon Bebinka, which hit coastal China during the first week of my residency.
-The work "Jifeng" is inspired by the monsoon, which determines - in its area of influence - the heavy rains that characterize the summer season.

Inside the Guanlan studio I had enormous resources at my disposal to create my works, along with free access 24/7.
These technical provisions allowed me to immerse myself deeply in my creative work: an experience that every printmaker needs to try at least once.

PORTFOLIO

Guanlan Printmaking Village

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