Luisa Rabbia working on
Birth
2017
Colored pencil on acrylic on canvas
108 x 202 in
Photo credit: David Dixon
Courtesy the artist

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH LUISA RABBIA

My work starts with a countless number of fingerprints on canvas, my approach is physical and intuitive. Whether I intertwine pencil lines or I scratch through layers of paint, marks accumulate over a large surface referencing both time and the responsibility that comes with every single action. I imagine our bodies immersed in invisible traces left by humanity over the course of time, small particles that we breathe in and out and that inevitably determine a present never disconnected from past and future. I see the fingerprints as fossils, traces that are there, just waiting to interact with the making of the painting.

Evan Roth
Landscapes
2020
Network located videos
Photo credit: Bruno Lopes, Red Lines with Landscapes, Portugal (Lisbon), Fidelidade Arte, January 31 – May 22, 2020, Lisbon

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH EVAN ROTH

My recent work concentrates on how bias affects systems. Our current network of buried glass strands did not descend from the cloud, but has a history dating back at least as far as the “All Red Line”, the name given to the first telegraph network to circumnavigate the globe. Otherwise known as the “Empire Girdle”, this cable landed only in areas shaded in red on maps depicting the British empire. These systems are narratives that are bent intentionally and unintentionally by the histories and biases of those with the power to define which way is up.

Irina Kirchuk
Cloudburst
Installation view
2018
Bold Tendencies Commissions
Photo credit: Damian Griffiths 

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH IRINA KIRCHUK

Our urban landscape.
The inconsequential and the unattended objects that fill the world with their material obsolescence and a petty and apparent functionality.
An absurd panorama.
Self-criticism, parody, sarcasm, humor, camouflage, irony, minimalism.
The symbolic and the obvious, the real and the fictional.

The discarded materials and its charm, a free record, unwanted, of our everyday.
Those aren’t solitary, lost and godforsaken bits, on the contrary, clues into worlds ruled by systems previously unknown.
Doors open to mystery, fantasy or fun.
Found objects isn’t only about saving resources, but also about pointing a finger to our own economic behavior.

Valentina Medda
Healing interventions for domestic wounds
Santarcangelo Festival_2019
Variable dimensions
acupuncture needles, house walls
Courtesy and photo credit: Claudia Borgia

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH VALENTINA MEDDA

“All you do is highlight what’s already there,” you once told me.
You hurt me – it sounded like an accusation.
But in the end…isn’t that what really matters – highlighting the existing?
Who am I to create? What needs to be created?

[Healing intervention for domestic wound_intervention#1 | NY, 2015]

Bianco-Valente
Terra di me
2018
Fine art print
Permanent collection Sicily Foundation, Palermo

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH BIANCO-VALENTE

Man, since the dawn of time, has felt the need to tie groups of stars together with imaginary lines, effectively invisible in the night sky. The artist’s work is based on these same principles: making the invisible visible, suggesting, evoking, bringing out the infra-thin network of connections that binds events, people and places together, in space and time. Continuing to ask the questions that seem to have no answer, continuing to search for the true meaning of existence, practicing the playground of philosophers and men of faith, constantly searching for new perspectives from which to observe the existing.

Ornaghi & Prestinari
Cristalleria
2021
Crystal sculpture photographed
Courtesy Ornaghi & Prestinari  

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ORNAGHI & PRESTINARI

Is it legitimate to extrapolate a sentence from a speech, untie a word from the others, a few moments from one’s whole life?

New worlds in old worlds,
new words in old words,
new worlds in old words,
new words in old worlds.

It could be said that all life does is moving things. Even speaking implies moving the air with sound.

Irene Fenara
Supervision
2022
Inkjet print
82×110 cm
Courtesy the artist, UNA, Piacenza, ZERO…, Milan

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH IRENE FENARA

It is said that the minimum height to notice the earth’s curvature is about 20 km from the height of the sea. In the stratosphere the eyes may water a little, and create halos, blurs and haze in the view, the colors become vivid and we wonder what a camera lens is telling us about the relationship between our planet and what we are looking at.

Gabriele De Santis
Doppio Titolo: Linea d’aria; Sweet dream, 2021
Digital collage
Dimensions variable

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH GABRIELE DE SANTIS

I’ve been thinking for long to transport my artworks or even an entire exhibition using my bike. It would be certainly slow, but gentle with the environment and long the way I would have enough time to think or even make more artworks.
If my bike had wings and it could fly as a parrot, I would need to pedal for just 6917 km from my studio to reach the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Artworks could fit in my handlebar basket, like Elliot and E.T. Dreaming is sweet.
[Cartoline Faticose 04]

Roberto Pugliese
Critici Ostinati Ritmici
solenoids, circuits, microcontrollers, cables, sensors, internet connection
2010
Courtesy Studio la Città, Verona
Photo credit: Michele Alberto Sereni

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ROBERTO PUGLIESE

Nature, a superior and mystical intelligence, is constantly mortified by one of its creations, the human being who, like a tumor, attacks his own organism. Just as nature allows man to exploit it, at the same time it has made sure that man, by evolving, endowed himself with a conscience and sensitivity, weapons that nature uses to defend itself. Sometimes human sensitivity translates into inspiration and leads to artistic production, which has the duty and the power to be a witness to society, a means of communication through which a common conscience can develop.