Norberto Botto, arts in equilibrium
Interview with the artist
Luxgallery met Norberto Botto, one of the most interesting emergine artists in the Italian panorama of arts.
Where does it come from and where does it go to your artistic research?
I have always been labelled as an eclectic artist.
I believe the reasons are to be found in my childhood. As a child, when looking outside the window – I was born in a town at the sea, La Spezia – I used to sea the harbour and the colours of the ships, the containers and the tracks.
Moreover, at the ground floor of the building where I used to live, my parents owned a naval furnishing and antiques shop. I lived 90% of my life from age 0 through 10 in that place. The strong contrast between the splendour of the sea and the dusty reality of the harbour, besides the smell of old furniture and of any kind of object, became part of me. After junior high school, I graduated at the Artistic high School and then at the University with a degree in set and costume design at the Academy of Beaux Arts, thanks to which I was able to strengthen and deepen my ideas.
What is the origin of your projects?
When I begin a project, I have to think it through so that it can go on smoothly and be consistent with the leitmotif driving the world, that is mathematics. I have always considered the aesthetics of things essential for people’s life. I do not refer to the trivial and futile appearance per se, rather to the real energy of the objects. An object has a shape, given by whom produced that object, be it a great designer or the blind Chance…This object, eventually, is chosen. By whom? Why? Where it located? The same object, related to others, originates endless combinations that deliver, want it or not, emotions and thoughts. Objects re-create, telling a lot of whom chose them. It is as if there was a diffusing power, blending things together.
Like ingredients, mixing to create meals. Whether you talk about human emotionalism, music, design or botany, or any other topic, everything interacts and acts according to the common language of mathematics. This thought has always been the constant element I drew my artistic expression on.
Is this the reason why you express yourself through manifold languages?
My eclecticism actually becomes a single language, with numerous forms of expression. I never get stuck on one single particular discipline. I need to paint, to write, to project objects, clothes, costumes or environments, for the film set, theatre or private houses it doesn’t matter, although each of them has different needs. Obviously, each discipline needs knowledge and experience, but if you love what you do, you can reach the best results without efforts.
Why the title “Equilibria” for the theme of your works of art?
The choice of the name “Equilibrium”, as for paintings and sculptures, was automatic. My works of art are the search for the perfect balance between the spaces, according to Aristotelian and Vitruvian criteria.
Concepts which are deeply embedded into physics, from which the man can not be separated. Those are few of the certainties you can rely on, reflecting in the equilibrium of things which belongs to each life experience.
Why did you choose materials like gold and glass?
My works of art, whatever they are, reflect the search for elegance…the natural, thin, unconscious, not-showed off or garish elegance. What material can better than gold express the concept of elegance? Gold has always been used as symbol of the divine. It is not a colour, it’s more than sculpture, it lives with the observer, it gives back light, stepping out of the painting without the possibility of stopping it. It cannot be tamed.
Other colour that you like?
I paint using deep and intense colours, with a marked preference for the blue of Prussia, which is a night blue stretching towards black. In the past I used to paint using oil painting clothing, searching for transparency in the nuances. Now I almost exclusively paint using oil colours on glass armour-plates, that I crash afterward. The chipping transform into crystals radiating light. And the transparency of the glass allows to reflect into the entire work of art.
Whom or what do you draw on when you create?
On the subject I need to design. Be it a painting, a sculpture or anything else. For instance, if I need to design the direction or the scenes of an opera, I listen to it unrelentingly. I need to become part of it, I need to know it as if the events the protagonists go through were happening to me, blending in the music. Moreover, I try to find out everything about that opera, when it was written and set; I also conduct long iconographic researches, trying, at the same time, to focus on the principles of my “equilibria”.
The same is true for films, as well as other disciplines.
What is you internal perspective on today’s market of contemporary art? How much room is there for emerging artists?
I am very individualist in my job. But the market, especially in Italy, is going through a difficult moment. As for emerging artists, I believe that it has become too easy to define oneself an artist and that, on the other hand, the galleries tend to invest mostly on the safest choice of popular artists. Rather than investing energies on good emerging artists, a good amount of galleries, also important ones, do nothing but hiring rooms, allowing therefore only who has enough financial means to exhibit. This, obviously, is a system that in the long run will destroy the same genuineness of art.
Davide Passoni
Cinema, Exhibitions, Exhibitions And Galleries, Luxgallery For Young Artists, Music, Stories Of Achievements, Theatre,
Tags: Academy of Beaux Arts, Contemporary Art, La Spezia, Norberto Botto, oil colours, oil painting clothing, painting, panorama of arts, sculpture
Would you like to keep informed on similar news? Sign up to LuxLetter
Related articles
Receive the latest updates from the luxury world!
