Self-described “artist and destroyer” Graziano Locatelli has created an inventive take on bas-relief sculpture by building subway tile walls that shatter to reveal human forms. Some works contain subtle shifts and cracks that reveal their portraits, while other sculptures expose more fully-formed figures pushing through the tiles. In his pieces with distinct three dimensional figures, the bodies are cloaked in an anonymizing layer of white “fabric” that erases their faces and blends in with the white tiles.
Graziano Locatelli’s artwork consists of damaged items comprising mixed materials like tiles, cement, glue, and metal plates. He enjoys creating disruption, but in a controlled, precise way.
“During my chaotic childhood, I developed an intense and uncanny fascination towards broken objects”, states the artist. The process of breakage has since become Locatelli’s primary artistic vision, realized through working methods that give rise to a sense of tension.
Some of his art objects are self-explanatory, while others are more subtle. The artist plays with things or figures breaking through tiled walls into the room, which bring to mind a birth scene at the interface between reality and unreality. In other work,s the viewer only sees hairline cracks which form the abstract shape of a human face. Locatelli transfers the fragility of objects to the brittleness of the human body.
