10 Questions with Marcello Silvestre

Marcello Silvestre was born in Naples in 1977 and graduated in architecture in 2004. In 2008 he won the competition for the Italian Pavilion at Expo of Shanghai 2010.

In 2009 he won the prize Europe40Under40 sponsored by the Chicago Atheneum and was selected by the Italian Ministry of Youth for the yearbook of young creatives awarded in the world (Young Blood 09). In 2010 he won the competition for the extension of Liceo Farnesina, Roma. In 2015 Marcello began the artistic career that led him to win the golden plaque for sculpture in 2018 at the "Premio Arte" of the magazine with the same name from the Mondadori Group; with his works, he participates in international exhibitions, both collective and personal. His work is published in a national and international magazine such as Mondadori's catalog of contemporary art.

www.marcellosilvestre.com | @in3dart

ARTIST STATEMENT

“The art, the city, and the substance of time

Marcello Silvestre’s artworks narrate the city through the emotions, the smells, the flavors, and the noises, just as Italo Calvino does in his Invisible Cities.

He relates the indissoluble relationship between man and city, sculpting bodies, legs, and arms. He lets towers and houses arise in a continuous flow, interweaving soft lines, triangles, and edges.

He narrates the man and his feelings crystallized in figures covered with the patina of time, the same patina covering the walls, the gates, and the gutters that go along our steps while we live in our cities.

You can talk about cities in several ways; he does it through dreamlike visions and stuff that gets older in time, just as every stone and every heart does every day.”

The Rust of Feelings (Misunderstanding), 3D print: PLA with rust finish, 60x23x25 cm and 58x19x18cm, 2017. Marcello Silvestre©

INTERVIEW

You are an artist as well as an architect. When did you decide to start doing Art? And why did you choose this career path?

I started my artistic career in 2015. I've always loved 3D modeling, and I bought my first 3D printer that allowed me to bring my ability as a digital sculptor to the real world. I've chosen to follow my passion and my talent starting this new career that makes me happy. Give shape to and bring to life my own inner world and narrate my vision to others; it's what I've always wanted to do deep in myself.

What do you wish you knew about Art before you got started?

When I started, I wish I'd known better the market and dynamics linked to this world in order to avoid running into dozens of useless collective exhibitions organized by incompetent and often dishonest people. What I regret from the past is for sure not having the possibility to study into an academy of Art, where I would have been able to learn the traditional techniques in the best possible way. The study of these techniques has thus become a journey of research and discovery on which I embarked on my own to find my new and personal forms of communication.

The Rust of feelings (Worry, Hope, Goodbye), 3D print: PLA and rust finish, 78x18x16 cm, 86x32x23 cm, 93x20x13 cm, 2017. Marcello Silvestre©

In your work, you often refer to cities characterized by peculiar smells, views, and noises. Where did you get your imagery from? And do you refer to any city in particular?

The novel Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino has been a constant reference point for me both as an architect as well as as an artist to narrate about the city through various points of view. My works are influenced by Magritte's surrealist images and Italian squares by De Chirico, by the futuristic urban vision of Blade Runner and Miyazaki's fantastic world.

What art do you most identify with?

Since when I was child I've always loved the drawings and the sculptures of the great masters like Michelangelo, the smooth lines of Canova and the dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio. I've grown with those images in my head, and in my art remains the admiration and the continuous recall to figurative art. I try to reinterpret in a contemporary version the great cultural heritage that we as Italians, bring with us. Speaking of this, recently I started carrying on research about the reinterpretation of Michelangelo's non-finito: figurative sculptures characterized by incomplete surfaces and carvings showing triangular surfaces (which are the generative mesh net of my works) under the skin of the figures.

Quarantine, 3D print: PLA with rust finish, 170x45x35 cm, 2020. Marcello Silvestre©

The waits, 3D print: PLA with rust finish, medium height 60 cm, 2019. Marcello Silvestre©

How important is the perception of the viewers of your work? Do you wish people can recognize themselves in your sculptures?

The way people perceive my work is very stimulating; it enriches me every time to find out what sort of emotions my works inspire and what kind of interpretation every viewer gives. In the series “The man, the soul and the time” I use abstract figures because I have as target the identification of the viewer in those bodies without face that treat topics - such as love, waits, anxiety, fear - that are complex but close to the heart of every person.

Have you been successful with marketing and selling your art during the pandemic time?

Unfortunately, the pandemic brought a sharp slowdown in the sales of my works, also due to the cancellation of several fairs and the travel limitations. These strong limitations have pushed me to design a series of virtual spaces where visitors could experience my works in the most immersive way possible. I hope to be able to share online this new method of fruition of my works soon.

We all had a lot of free time over the past few months, and some of us dedicated it to discovering new artists. Did you find any positive change in the approach people have to art now, compared to last year?

Unfortunately, I haven't found any difference, apart from the fact that people have got closer to buying works of art online and the possibility of virtual exhibitions.

What are your thoughts on digital presentations, like fairs and exhibitions, for artists? Do you think these are good opportunities, or do you just wish to go back to life as it was before the pandemic?

As a digital artist and fan of these technologies, I support these new forms of communication of art. Moreover, thanks to virtual reality, new opportunities for art fruition are arising, thus allowing us to enjoy art in an immersive way even at a distance. The use of goggles for virtual reality enables now to appreciate better also works of art such as sculptures and art installations that absolutely need the third dimension to be appreciated and evaluated.

Dorotea, Zenobia, Irene, Lost wax bronze, 17x14x8 cm, 28x14x7 cm, 32x9x6 cm, 2018. Marcello Silvestre©

What are you working on now, and what are your plans for the future? Anything exciting you can tell us about?

I'm working on various sculptures in bronze and others in marble with the five-axis robot that sculpts starting from 3D drawings. As far as 3D printing is concerning I am bringing forward different parallel projects, among which two works are life-sized ones, measuring ca. 170 cm. From the beginning of the year, I also entered the crypto art market, and lately, I've been working on 3D animations and illustrations about to be published.

Lastly, where do you see yourself five years from now?

Five years from now, I see myself advancing in my artistic career, and I hope to realize big outdoor sculptures, such as a monument for a square in order to share more of my research with a bigger audience. I also dream of having a laboratory and a bigger space in order to support my continuous research, which is in constant evolution.

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