Meccanismo 3

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The “Mechanisms” series also called “Totem Builders” is the hallmark of my work.

I started working on this imaginary world and its inhabitants in 1985, developing it over the years. It is essentially a metaphor for our world, our relationships and the explicit and tacit rules that govern it. A complex, intricate and fascinating whole from the anthropological point of view, a very complicated mechanism which however does not work.

If you analyze it, it won’t stand up. There is no logic, there is often no common sense. This is why these very complicated machines that cannot and will never work. And then there are them (us), the inhabitants of this jungle, each with his mask and the role of him, each one exactly where it belongs.

Then there is another aspect, which is the purely playful one which is an essential component of my work, a derivation of years and years as an illustrator, so you enjoy looking for hidden details, clues, writings. You can spend days looking for details, and you will never find them all.

A closer View

With this work I resumed the series of mechanisms in 1998, interrupted in 94. The peculiarity of this piece, currently part of a private collection in England, is that it was the first work made with a 0.1 mm rapidograph, thus halving the thickness of the line compared to all my previous works, with a notable increase in precision in detail.

This work is also intended as a sort of self-irony regarding the fact that I abandoned the “Totem Builders” series over ten years ago, so I imagined that the builders, tired of waiting, had devised a “self-drawing” machine to compensate for the continuing absence of the “great architect” (that would be me). This is the meaning of the writings appearing in the central panel at the bottom. It must always be kept in mind that for me, drawing without the concept of play does not exist.

I like populating my works with imaginary characters who do abstruse things; after all, they are the inhabitants of a complex mechanism built specifically to be inoperable. And I like that, just as I enjoyed inventing them and placing them in this context, the observer can spend days discovering hidden details, even the smallest ones (a curiosity: often the bolts drawn on the beams are actually writings, referring to events that occurred during the day, while I was drawing). In short, art is art, but it should never take itself too seriously.

From the same series of works

Meccanismo 3 Ink drawing

Availability

Fine Art Giclée, a museum-quality print made with the highest-quality inks and papers. Printed under the artist’s supervision and approval.