Il Mio Salotto hosts Alessandro Lupi

A journey through art, from Genoa to Berlin

Since the dawn of my curiosity, my thoughts have always been drawn, somehow, to something my body cannot see, or touch. Excuse me for not finding a word to define this abstract entity that has always lodged in the waves of the mind. I think perhaps a correct word to describe this feeling does not exist, or rather has not been invented. Yet for some time this force has been presenting itself to my senses whenever I find myself in front of an art work I like.

Reasoning along these lines, I can safely say that nothing has ever struck these chords as clearly as the art of AlessandroLupi. Illuminating a path that has always been in front of me, but never before has it been so clear. I decided to ask Alessandro Lupi for an interview for Il Mio Salotto and, to my great surprise, he accepted. So what came out of it was more of an enlightening chat on the art of living than an interview. I am here to tell the story.

Alessandro grew up and studied in Genoa, and while he was attending the Academy of Fine Arts, his passion for creating had already exploded. He is astute in extrapolating lessons from everyone around him, and as he tells me, it was one of his professors in particular who enlightened him one day by telling him: "Alessandro, you are free, and free must be your thought, if you wake up one morning and sneeze, and decide to turn that sneeze into an art work, that sneeze becomes an art work!"

A simple sentence that makes such a complicated concept real.

Seeing Alessandro telling me about his life with such simplicity, makes clear to me how much he has been able to treasure his teacher's advice, and all of a sudden all his works turn over in my head, taking on a completely different meaning, a completely different purpose.

"Since I was a child, I've had a passion for disassembling and reassembling objects in the house or garage, I wanted to understand how they worked".

His passion is palpable for me even through the screen, so much so that when we talk about his installations around Italy or Portugal I lose myself in the sensations I believe he experienced in creating them.

A simple neighbourhood railing dividing streets and buildings is transformed into a "glitch" in reality. Alessandro calls the work "reflections" and it is certainly the perfect title for those vibrations of the mind that appear invisible to us. Now, thanks to him, in Via Lambro in Monza we can see them with our own eyes.

Riflessioni, permanent site-specific installation, Monza Duomo.

Click on the image to watch the video

Continuing the conversation, he tells me about his sudden love for Berlin, which burst out during his first visit to the city in 1999, when he was invited to an exhibition in the historic Tacheles (a former Berlin social centre and reference point for every artist in Germany and Europe).

Persuaded by the atmosphere of those years, which in my opinion danced harmoniously with artists who thought as freely and lightly as he did, Alessandro decided to move there in 2008.

After a good half hour in which I was 'educated' on the meaning of art for Alessandro, the conversation fell, as if we already agreed, on the fundamental need to bring life and enthusiasm back to the native region that we share and to which we both seem very attached.

For years, Liguria has been travelling on involutional emanations which, as an obvious result, have been driving more and more people away from it. So Alessandro, being the good artist that he is, proposes an answer to a problem that seems unsolvable. It is a social experiment born in England, in the county of West Yorkshire, where a small town of just over 10,000 inhabitants began, perhaps out of boredom or perhaps out of passion, to cultivate fruit and vegetables on every street corner. The activity, which began almost as a game, quickly became a real reason to live for the inhabitants themselves, transforming every green area that had previously been unused into a flourishing botanical garden capable of satisfying the demand for vegetables of many people. Obviously, the only price to pay is the commitment to look after the plants, which only takes a few minutes a day and as a result, the community has rediscovered an enormous sense of belonging to their land plus a free daily dose of fruit and vegetables to offer on their tables.

The task is not impossible and with a minimum of organisation, it would be possible to breathe new life into hundreds of villages in the Ligurian hinterland, which are now being abandoned. Alessandro's idea would be to link cultivation, which is nature's most beautiful art form, to human art itself, with various types of installation, painting, or sculpture.

Alessandro's art needs air, space, and broad and shiny movements through which it can fully express itself, and each of his works is a perfect example of this. Simple components made with a synthetic mirror composed of polymers and metal, transformed through a long work full of dedication and passion, into a starry sky just a few metres from our heads, able to make a square or a park magical and able to transport the passer-by a little more attentive into a simpler world than the one we know, more magical and full of hope for the future.

Alessandro Lupi has chosen his work and proves every day that he really knows how to do it, reminding us that the world we live in is not only made up of what we actually see.

Images taken from the artist's website: https://www.alessandrolupi.com/ Instagram: @alessandro.lupi.art

Facebook: Alessandro Lupi