Ossobuco

Ossobuco, composition of images, 2009

Between 2009 and 2010 I developed a series of works made by arranging together a big number of images into a multipattern structure. A high number of images different in size and proportion are arranged onto the surface of the wall following multiple mixed criteria, as thematic or visual patterns, chains of free associations, metaphoric or literal, as well as repetition of shapes, lines and colours. The relationship between subject and object, the combination of simultaneity and consecution that makes possible the understanding still preserving complexity, the productive potential of shifting back and forth between different perspectives, are what interested me to explore through this series of works.

Ossubuco is one of them and has been conceived during the workshop Networking held by the artist Pavel Braila. The workshop venue was the former public slaughterhouse of our city, now converted into a cultural space. The subject of the workshop was slaughtering.

The work started from a conversation I had with a group of retired workers of the slaughterhouse: during the conversation what surprised me was their approach to labour, based on a non hierarchical organization, on a collaboration that not needed a boss to work and they were really proud of. Starting from that I went ahead in making connections between slaughtering and class struggle.

I used all of these thoughts and feelings to set up a composition of images: by means of visual correspondences and pattern matching I tried to activate in the viewer multiple paths of meaning, and to question the brute and violence of the power structure of economics.