The artists who deal with and take advantage of “new technologies” have powerful, fascinating and even ambiguous tools at their disposal: it is not excluded that they could be “kidnapped” by them, that they could undergo a fascination which, far from being able to offer them “new horizons”, would instead confine them within a technicality that is almost an end in itself, an aestheticizing and self-referential frame.
This is certainly not the case with Quayola, our guest artist. If the expressive urgency led him early, with the baggage of a classical education, to seek his path in a physical (London) and technical (the “new media”) elsewhere, over time he has composed a career based on in-depth and detailed investigations on themes also borrowed from the art of the past, which in the light of his works acquire an original and strictly contemporary reading.
With the antenna of the new means at his disposal, he calls together recurring artistic ideas that can therefore be defined as “classics”, reworking them and then developing them in a completely personal way. They are therefore “tools” for an intense and participatory rereading of orthodox and stabilized visual “codes”, transposed into the ideal and poetic world of the artist, who then releases them to the public.
Quayola, Storms Digital-Impact, Barcelona 2023
From time to time the subject of investigations have been the hieratic nature of the “unfinished” sculptures, which in their reinterpretation bear the signs of the scientific/artistic analysis that has gone through them, the landscape painting, in a game of references between natural and artificial, for an “imaginative” natural world, the exploration of the coordinates of classical iconography, the complex and stimulating world of the synergistic expression of sound and image.
In all this a new narrative is proposed, and the detachment that sometimes elsewhere seems to exist between the author – initiator of the creative process and its manifestation – and the work – projected towards its user and suspended in this hiatus – is not here: his sign is always alive, in every dimension of his work, both when he “gives us back” something very physical, tangible, and when it becomes more ethereal.
Quayola, Sculpture-Factory HOW-Art-Museum, Asymmetric-Archaeology_Gazing Machines, Shanghai, China, 2019
“I observe the world through my eyes, and the eyes of these new machines. There are analogies with the work of impressionist painters, who worked en plein air: I observe nature, and I discover new languages through these observations”. We met Quayola on the occasion of the meeting entitled “Art and artificial intelligence” which took place in Turin, at the Regional Museum of Natural Sciences, where the artist presented his work.
Quayola, Hercules and Nessus
Q.: For the contemporary artist – and for you in particular – can artificial intelligence be considered a “new brush” or an “artistic partner”?
A.: Both. Artificial intelligence, or technology in general, all the devices used in my work and the systems that are developed, I like to imagine them not only as simple tools, but as generators of possible ideas, even collaborators, with which to actually have exchanges. Because I often and willingly appropriate the technologies I use, in some way, taking them from a certain world, a certain “industry”. They are reimagined and recalibrated for something else, so the exchange with these technologies is often quite experimental, of course. Technology itself informs the processes behind every creation. It is an exchange that actually goes on over time, lasting even many years, and then finds its balance.
Quayola, Jardin
D.: One of the directions of your research involved interaction with sound, with music. What are the things to take into account when tackling this type of project?
A.: The relationship between sound and image is something that has always been present in my work. In reality it was born – as inspiration – from the whole electronic music movement of the late 90s. As a source of inspiration it starts from the moment in which, in Media Art, there was the encounter with electronic music, this revolution of Rave culture, of Club culture.
In some ways my work relates to sound, but in general it has always been very linked and inspired by these traditions. What fascinates me in researching audiovisual projects is trying to untie the traditional dependence between these two worlds, depending on the field of research, or depending on how they are used. For example, in cinema one comes first and then the other, the image is what guides. But the idea of actually being able to develop audiovisual compositions simultaneously is something that has always fascinated me. There have been many years of research to develop systems, and the tools I use to create these works.
These performances, these creations, are the result of experimentation with software that gives me the possibility of generating both, and of working with both languages in the same way. This is an important aspect for me. Then there is another aspect: my work linked to tradition, the idea of being able to re-explore something familiar to us, but in some other way, to explore new gestures on something that belongs to tradition. There has been a lot of research on new motorized pianos: an example of how an approach to music is not only linked to the creation of music, but also to reflect on what the instrument is, on what human gestures are, and on how these gestures can be completely transformed. How to use this tool – which is actually made for the human body – if, for example, a limb is missing. There is also this type of experimentation that intrigues me a lot in music.
Quayola, Seta Transient
D.: Developments in technology offer us new tools, but in art in particular it seems possible to experiment, and in some way even to prefigure new scenarios, where even the use of works is imagined to be “expanded”: immersive, augmented realities, various interactions between the work and the users. How do you see the “state of the art” in this light?
A.: As I was saying, my work is strongly linked to traditions. So, in one way or another, there are aspects of it that tend to go back to being very traditional; It’s something I relate to. Often the output of my works is very “traditional”, in the sense that it relates to physical space, as if they were paintings or sculptures, even if they can be videos. Museums themselves, then, are immersive spaces. In the museum we are in now we find ourselves immersed among many physical objects of a traditional nature. The idea of ”immersivity” is not strictly linked to new technologies: the Scrovegni Chapel is an immersive experience. I’m not all that intrigued by chasing all these new modalities or technologies. My relationship with technology develops very slowly, technology develops very quickly. The problem is that artistic research is something very slow, at least for me, it is a non-technological human process.
So sometimes getting to something takes many years, remaining with a certain coherence, and not always “jumping” onto new technologies. Trying to lightly explore what has arrived, perhaps trying to have a deeper approach to particular technologies, for a prolonged period of time, is something that allows me to address certain issues in depth.
D.: You have approached and reworked works of painting and sculpture from other centuries with your contemporary tools, comparing yourself with the artistic and aesthetic canons of other periods. What stimulates, attracts and inspires you – in general – about the art of the past, in particular?
A.: Even though I “escaped” Rome at the age of 19 to go to London in search of new languages and new experiments, it happened – in an almost paradoxical way – that I began to get closer to what I left behind.
I think it’s also something linked to my history, it came quite naturally to me, having grown up in Rome. Over the years, therefore, there have been many projects and research based on the analysis of objects of historical importance, be they paintings or sculptures.
Then slowly, over time, the work is evolving into a slightly different methodology, in the sense that the research – for example – on the tradition of landscape painting is not in this case a research on paintings, but perhaps on places that they were painted, to which I return.
In the same way I began to develop, with sculpture, research into some classic poses: for example research into some poses that come from Greco-Roman wrestling, using particular scanning systems. I actually work with fighters, and I capture particular moments, which I then work on.
Gradually the work detached itself from the idea of starting from an existing object, from another era, moving towards the idea of ”capturing data”, whether through observation of the natural world, or through other themes. However, this idea of relationship with some historical practices remains, such as landscape painting or my references to Michelangelo’s “unfinished”. It doesn’t mean going to scan Michelangelo’s “unfinished” objects, but it means – for me – exploring this idea of a new robotic algorithmic gesture in “unfinished places”, which are totally my creations. There has been a path over the years that, to date, has deviated a bit from the initial one.
Quayola, Pointillisme 01, Palazzo Cipolla, QUAYOLA recoding, Rome 2021
Q.: Do you think there are points of excellence in the world for developing the arts linked to new technologies, or places that are more ready to welcome them?
A.: In my personal experience, as I was saying, I “escaped” from Rome to go to London. That was a very beautiful period, of great excitement. At another point in my life, in my career, and also in the world – which has evolved in the meantime – I instead “escaped” from London, to return to Rome. I actually couldn’t say why, it’s linked to several factors. Surely at one time these languages were something particularly hidden, niche, very experimental. Today they are starting to be languages that are now taught in many universities around the world, they are starting to be something for which there is no need to go to particular places in the world. Our company is networked, so that we can develop projects almost anywhere. I think it is very important, however, to always relate to the international community, because today the communities of artists actually relate to each other on an international level. I think this exchange is important.
At least knowing English could be one thing that helps (smiles)!