Exhibit of Ferran Selvaggio in Osaka
We meet Ferran Selvaggio on the occasion of his one man show at Popelier Gallery.
I would like to start this interview from the end. Tell us about your new exhibition.
This exhibition, called "Nihon (Japan) Red Series", helded at the Popelier Art Gallery in Osaka, allows me to take a wide reflection about my personal vision on Japan and its cities. When you first step in a traditional Japanese house, it's like time travelling through lights, smells, and the emotions of the surrounding ambient. It really allows you to get into the heart of the Nippon. Over the last few years, many traditional houses has been bulldozered, some with a reason, some other without, changing the personality of the neighborhood, excluding the old inhabitants, losing its soul. The new constructions are just impersonal white boxes, without any essence.
How was arriving in Japan for the first time? For us it a quite far county and culture.
It has been incredible from the first moment. I realized how much I had still to learn, discover, know, see...but all with a calm and a tranquility that we do not know in Europe. Every day they tells me new stories, I learn from their millennial culture and traditions, that are kept and boosted by the society. I was a hard decision to make, to leave Barcelona and try a new life, but I am convinced that was the right choice. I would have be too hard to find what I found here.
There is continuous line through all your artworks over the years, as if any new series have its roots in the previous one.
My works has changed over the years, because I never stop observing, looking, learning and thinking. I often keep investigating over and over on the same theme, through the investigation of my own previous works, because I think that there is something left to say. That's why my artworks are unique, but part of an unicum.
What are you thinking when you are drawing?
It is difficult to explain. It depends on the artwork I am working on. Sometimes a calm sea, other with huge storms, spectacular lights and shadows, esoteric locations, sadness, happiness; every line that I trace brings a little story with it.
How happened the change from traditional painting to sculpture and photography?
It has been quite easy, natural, I would say, related to my growth as an artist. I always tried to keep moving forward, learning new techniques, this allowed me to have more ways to express myself. As per now, I am studying automation techniques and Artificial Intelligence.
Who are your models?
I grew up with the traditional artist, but over the years my models have changed. I discovered other art forms closer to my character, different one from the other, but to me they are all linked. From Alberto Burri to James Turrell, or Robert Smithson, Fabrizio Plessi, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Brossa.
What is your dream, your objective?
To keep working as an artist, to create more, to make more as an artist and as a person. Looks easy, but it is very hard to go on, always, no matter what, in an endless investigation.
A suggestion to a young artist.
To look and draw. To study, to learn how to have his own opinion. Not all they say is art, is actually art.
