artiFicio

WHAT THEY ARE 
The artiFicio collection is composed of decorative panels for interiors, created on wooden and metallic supports and decorated with stuccos, natural pigments, metallic sheets, varnishes of natural resins. The drawings recall and reinterpret organic, floral and marine forms. Sculpture -paintings of medium and large dimensions that reflect our re-elaboration of the highest Venetian craftsmanship.

THE ORIGIN

artiFicio panels were born from the need to express ourselves through new designs in constant dialogue with different spaces, houses, and other interiors lived or crossed by humans. artiFicio panels derive from our passion for decoration, manual and creative work, and mostly from our desire - undescribable through words- to create artworks of considerable size. Those who are familiar with our world know that our shop in San Marco is very small, which led us to set it up with small and medium size metallic sculptures as well as with our jewelry. All creations with a big soul, but a contained measure. 
 

Our workshop on the Giudecca, instead, gives us the possibility to experiment also with larger formats and so, after some requests to set up private homes and bigger spaces, we started working on wooden and metallic panels, applying ancient techniques, which we have reinterpreted through our own sensitivity, thus always prioritizing the naturalness of the matters and playing with the various oxidation processes.

Just like all the other artworks signed Materialmente, also artiFicio panels are the fruit of a joint work, in which our views merge and our techniques compensate one another. artiFicio panels are not planned beforehand, we do not put any limit at the beginning of the working process; these sculpture -paintings take shape layer after layer and require a significant amount of time due to the several hands of stuccos, varnishes and drying steps. 

The leading thread that links the different panels, each one an autonomous creation, is the desire to add beauty and serenity to a home, a room, or any social space. We are the houses that we live in, we fill our homes with objects that accumulate over time and remind us of people, places, life moments. We could possibly write a biography through the objects that surround us. We build houses and create clothes not to protect the body, but because the body itself does not suffice to the soul. They are all supplements, additions to our Self, we need them to build and give shape to our emotional life. Also when we stop in or walk through other places, like offices, studios, public rooms, halls, hotel rooms, we interact with the space and the objects; the kinder and warmer these places are, the more we feel at ease and in harmony with the new reality, because images are an important part of our universe and our personal stories. artiFicio panels recall nature, and nature makes us feel good.

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artiFicio panels enter these spaces trying to offer serenity, harmony and kindness, with the hope of conveying a sense of wellbeing. They are a mixture of nature and culture, exactly like us. The natural world is an integral part of this process, and provides us with constant inspiration. We draw floral and animal, mostly marine, patterns that are stylised representations of lives that convey at the same time feelings of lightness and deepness, and carry the viewer into a welcoming world of warm tones. The human hand, thus our work and artistic interventions, aim at enhancing and enriching such a world, celebrating, in a minimalist and understated way, Nature and Her power to improve our physical and mental wellbeing. We humans often tend to forget about this, so through these physical, tangible creations, we wish to homage Her.

WHAT WE PROPOSE OURSELVES TO OFFER

As we have always said, we believe that the only purpose of a painting is to make us happy. Our hope is to make a home, a room or any given lived or crossed place, an alive space, able to give emotions. Happiness is a harmonious place able to connect people and things in an intimate, physical and spiritual relationship, and with our artiFicio panels we hope to make this relationship congenial.

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A FEW WORDS ON THE TECHNICAL PROCESS

In the artiFicio panels, there is no distinction between sculpture and painting, the two techniques are merged. Starting from a wooden or metallic panel, isolated and smoothed, we apply pigments, laquerings, and natural resin varnishes, like in the oriental painting tradition. We draft the drawings using varnish, after this several oxidation steps and gildings with copper, brass, silver and gold-like metallic sheets follow, which we then oxidate through different techniques, from the simpler ones involving water and salt to more complex pictorial-alchemic processings, always based on natural matters. Layer after layer, a patina is created, which writes and records all the working steps and their times. The metals confer width and tri-dimensionality and interact with light, changing with it and offering different visions and perspectives during the different times of the day and the seasons.  

Essential for us the use of natural, healthy "ingredients", which lead to the realization of sculpture-paintings that are alive, living artworks constantly in dialogue with the surrounding space and light: only apparently static, artiFicio are decorative panels continuously in motion.