Mi aiuti a capire cosa sto facendo?

Book curated by Maria Morganti with Piero: Piero Pes.

CAN YOU HELP ME TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I’M DOING?

In February 2012 when my son was 10 we started having a conversation about art and my work.

Piero said things that were extremely important to me.

I decided to create a work out of all these notes that I had transcribed over a period of about eighteen months.

This project starts from the idea of being behind the work, of giving space to the process. It touches the place in which the artist asks herself questions, tries to reason and expresses doubts about her work. In this case I did it together with my son, much in the same way as the book project One Diary Leads To Another in which I published my father’s diaries. In that case, it was as though my father, who had passed away, had given me the words so that I could speak. In this case, it was my son who became the direct and active interlocutor who helped me to understand what I was doing.

Piero even took the pictures. They describe my daily actions: from 2011, as soon as I enter the studio I take the camera, which is on a special piece of equipment, and go onto the canal side outside the studio. I set the camera down on the corner of a low wall and take a photo of the same spot.

The frame captures the place where the water rises and falls depending on the tide. The water that more or less covers the brick wall has a close relationship with my paintings, which I call Sedimentations.

Piero’s eyes are on me and his gaze – which is external but close – observes, investigates and tries to understand.