Looking through the different exhibitions you held across time your body of work seems very rich, in both media and style.  Recently it looks like you are focusing mostly on painting as a medium and how it intertwines with installation in the same space.

Yes, I’m mainly painting.  I guess it’s about moods, feelings and what not. Drawing and photography is part of it. It’s the material I work with. It’s quite simple in terms of media. Painting and sculpture. I like to sing. That ends up to be a performance sometimes. I write once in while. I like to think that my material is everything important to me, both in immaterial material and physical material. But in the end it might be simply about some kind of beauty. I usually dream about works and then a show. 

I daydream a lot. 

Looking at past shows, ’hi Is just another word for hello’ for instance, compared to your most recent one ‘everything no one ever wanted’, the difference in both style and artistic choices is very striking. I wonder, do you conceive your practice as a progression? 

I think it’s pretty much the same. These artworks were combining photographic prints with painting.

What I see as a fil rouge in all your different shows is the idea of the Icon. It’s a very interesting element to analyse. The icon is vastly explored in early Christianity, I think for example of the Coptic images of figures with staring eyes, but also beyond it, large part of Christian or religious imagery is dedicated to the icon and its symbolic value. Transposed onto contemporary society, we could think of public personae as sorts of icons. You often depict famous figures of the fashion world, for example. Is this something you think about? Do you see them as contemporary holders of iconic status? 

I think certain people are iconic. and I think all my friends and people I admire are that. And then situations, moods and other things can be iconic. I’m not interested in the general Christianity or coptic images. Quite the opposite. They don’t speak to me at all. But I believe that anything that is made with great admiration and passion has the character of an icon.  Andy Warhol is my favourite and was the first Artist I fell in love with.  And I grew up catholic.

This aspect of the icon is strictly related to two other things that are recurrent in your practice. The portrait, as a pictorial genre, and the idea of the gaze. Can you tell me more about these two pivotal topics?

I guess the gaze and the glance is where it all happens.

Also interesting about your work is the employment of everyday items. They can be seen as vestiges of everyday life, often reminiscent of specific trends or times. In this sense your work reflects a lot about contemporary society and its customs. 

I work with the material that surrounds me. And I love beautiful things. So it’s simply the material I work with.

Coming back to the use of everyday objects, sunglasses are a recurrent theme in your work. This connects back to the idea of the gaze and the icon, previously explored. I am curious to know your idea about it. 

I think that’s true. Yes.

Last question I have for you concerns the idea of scenography, which I find particularly suitable for your practice because of the way you play with the space you inhabit, and also the versatility of environments you have worked in, like the Balenciaga store for example. Is theatre a source of inspiration to you?

I love theater and opera. But more because of the story and the drama. And the music of course. But that’s what every exhibition has or does. Everything has a scenography. But I’m not into sets or stage decoration. My work is about beauty, love and passion, life and death and other so called big or small things.