10 Questions with Luciano Caggianello
Luciano Caggianello, born in Siena in 1959, is an artist and designer who began his career in the 80s interacting with different professional fields (advertising, illustration, graphics, design). At the same time, he embarked on a solid path of artistic research that, after the initial and assiduous attendance at the studios and studios of various artists, led him to evolve different visual themes and also allowed him to consolidate a structured itinerary national and international exhibition.
At the same time, this path is also accompanied by the publication of some books (“Intermediario Immateriale” 2003, “Parole Altrove” 2014, “Aporia e Metamorfosi dell’Arte” 2019, “Fenomenologia del Quotidiano 2020, “Pubblicità .jPig” 2021) which serve as an aid to reflection. and deepening about one's conceptual and philosophical research.
He lives and works in Turin.
gigarte.com/lucianocaggianello | @lucianocaggianello
ARTIST STATEMENT
In recent years the artistic recognition of Luciano Caggianello become substantially a work of prevailing perceptual synthesis that re-elaborates all the didactic, cultural, and intellectual interactions also coming from the synthesis of its multiple training fields (from applied industrial physics, to architecture, to graphics, to design, to visual).
This approach identifies the artistic objective of a basic conceptual thematic project and of experimentation inserted between concrete "poverty" and digital work, revealing much more relevant to parameters and concepts of presentation than of representation.
Light Symphony, Digital work, 90x90 cm, 2021 © Luciano Caggianello
INTERVIEW
First of all, introduce yourself to our readers. Who are you, and how did you start experimenting with images?
My name is Luciano Caggianello; more than an artist and a designer, I like to call myself a creative because I have worked and interacted in multiple professional environments capable of unleashing the charismatic intent of producing a new idea (Advertising, Illustration, Graphics, and industrial and car design). On the other hand, in the artistic field, the path has led me to evolve various representative and visual themes, allowing me to validate even an articulated and rewarding national and international exhibition itinerary.
I obtained a diploma in Applied Industrial Physics, a degree in Architecture, and a degree in Design as well as two diplomas in Conservative Restoration (wood and stone materials). I also attended the Academy of Fine Arts and many other environments, ateliers, courses, and people related to specific creative and artistic sectors.
The influence of my training but also the ability to experience reality, or perhaps an artistic function, in a context of images and communication certainly exists within a mental conformation, and precisely within those multiple perimeters, I like to explore many different topics. Although I am not a revolutionary, I try to challenge some models of communicative precariousness by recovering the notion of meaning and the prerogative of a functional thought. All the sedimentation of my background represents the enzyme of creativity, identifies and personifies the "cultural peptin" suitable for breaking down a generalist approach into an effective mode of functional contribution of thought and concept.
In recent years my recognition has essentially become a work of prevailing perceptual and conceptual synthesis, which associates and re-elaborates all the didactic, cultural, and intellectual interactions also coming from my various training fields (from Applied Industrial Physics to Architecture to Visual, Communication, Art). Furthermore, this approach, identifying the artistic objective of thematic-conceptual planning and of experimentation inserted between concrete "poverism" and digital art, turns out to be much more referred and pertinent to concepts of presentation than of representation.
Finally, as an author, I have also published some books ("Intermediario Immateriale" 2003, "Parole altrove" 2014, "Aporia e Metamorfosi dell'Arte" 2019, "Fenomenologia del Quotidiano 2020, "Pubblicità .jPig" 2021) which have mainly served as an aid to the reflection and deepening of my personal conceptual and philosophical research.
THE CONSUMERISM OF ART, installation, 11x9 cm, 2022 © Luciano Caggianello
You started in advertising and design before turning to art. How would you define yourself as an artist nowadays? And how did this definition change over the years?
Professionally, I started out in advertising as a graphic designer, illustrator, and then Art Director, to then divert my interests to design (industrial and car design), but in reality, art has always accompanied these careers, so I can't say to have become an artist after having practiced other professions. In fact, having studied a lot and having prepared myself in different fields, I was ready to do all these jobs, which I then had the good fortune to carry out in subsequent moments.
Obviously, the artist I once was has changed compared to the artist I am today, so much so that now (as I mentioned before) I prefer to be defined by another term, i.e., creative rather than artist. Being creative means having established different processes, perhaps using alternative systems or tools so that the idea, the concept, and the thought become the main and predominant symbol in dealing with and managing a perimeter within which aesthetic, visual, artistic, planning, social, communicative.
What is fundamental is achieved through the ability to know how to express these parameters and certainly not by how we prefer to call ourselves or perhaps by how we are labeled. I am convinced that the personality is externalized through processes and procedures that are also of an intellectual and cognitive type. When an individual is saturated with knowledge (although no one will ever be saturated enough), this intellectual capacity can be transferred, hijacked, and integrated into other areas. In short, I believe that only by accumulating knowledge does one become capable and suitable to transmit it, and vice versa; one is unable to transfer anything to anyone, even if they address you as an artist, genius, or superstar.
You have a long career, and you have worked in several different fields. What is your most treasured memory as an artist so far?
Two memories come to mind. The first is associated with a person, Augusto Morello (a great and esteemed intellectual, also president of the Milan Triennale) whose design seminars (which, however, encompassed other and considerable collateral themes) I attended in the early 1990s, I remember. In this context, through his oratorical ability, his intellectual acumen, and skillful cognitive evolution, Morello was able to transmit and show me new conceptual horizons as well as the ability to target different contextualizations through alternative idealistic approaches. However, these argumentative exchanges and these illuminating visions have greatly benefited and influenced my activity as a designer and artist.
The second memory, on the other hand, pertains to my verbal hybridization that I invented many years ago. In fact, I coined the term "Inceptual Art," i.e., the thematic presence of a thought that can be placed between the useless and the conceptual while still respecting the design perimeters. The argumentative idea, by its abstract nature, can sometimes turn out to be functional, sometimes conceptual, but in any case, always poised between the concept of usefulness and that of uselessness. Obviously, the probability that one aspect prevails over the other is circumstantial and interacts only by virtue of unequivocal reasoning, according to which the idea belongs to the theoretical dimension of thought.
Thinking becomes the ability to support the idea itself towards a precise meaning, always communicating its precise competence and location, or rather its perfect usefulness, while supporting its eventual and manifest uselessness. However, I understood that there is no "nothing useless"; there is rather the different contextualization of direct interaction as well as an implicit, but not in vain, effort in determining a progression.
Designing and conceiving represent an accurate way of thinking, so much so that form and result become the parameters of involvement with the idea, physically and conceptually. The form is the entity that envelops the idea, and the envelope transforms the idea into something visible by adapting to the circumstantialisation through which it interacts, but without an idea, knowing how to do it is pure competence for its own sake, and it is difficult to materialize a complete form.
The result of this reflection, anthropological and methodological, on the subject, therefore, takes the form of the conception of works, but above all of thought, in order to explore and discover that many human manifestations are (or could be) also useless, however, even if they certainly appear of underestimated usefulness, in concrete everyday life they are useful. In fact, these presentation methodologies serve to support; they serve to smile, think, ironize, dream, meditate, re-elaborate, interpret, meditate, and evolve that human characteristic definable through the complete sense of evolution.
Remember to turn off narcissism, Digital work, 90x90 cm, 2023 © Luciano Caggianello
PHILOSOPHICAL QUARRELS, PAPER, 50x50 cm, 2021 © Luciano Caggianello
Can you tell us about the process of creating your work? What is your artistic routine when working?
My creativity and my artistic process are influenced by everyday life as well as other intellectual cues such as Philosophy or even History. I believe that the research I carry out can be defined as a "metallurgy of thought." This metaphysics of thought leads to the elaboration of synthesis concepts, intellectual experimentations, verbal innovations, and visual alternatives to then reach, after this inner wandering, the awareness of precise meaning. In fact, man, even if delivered to limitless experimentation on himself, always accesses the inevitability of a concrete behavioral reality and must therefore provide an interpretative key.
Even if my approach is based on creative methodologies, I don't establish a precise and strategic work routine, especially behavioral or habitual. My mind has become accustomed to receiving stimuli in the most disparate contexts; my ideal environment is the one close to perimeters of metamorphosis, stories, alternative visions, and even errors, as well as a concrete existential phenomenology. My inner background is not predominantly exhibited except in the expressive and contextual will of the concept. Obviously, after having grasped my intuitions, I elaborate and rehabilitate them in the studio, adapting them to a precise medium in order to be able to direct them towards their definitive argument. Being able to use digital technology, sculpture, installation, or painting, I therefore interpret the work thinking of the support that is able to synthesize, interpret and enhance it better than others.
Furthermore, since I have discovered that in life those who are unable to convince desperately try to amaze, my approach aligns itself with the issue of persuasion in the most polite way possible without the need to shout, trying to propose my beliefs (which are not certainties, and I to clarify it) in a perspective that aims at a complete sense.
What do you see as the strengths of your art, visually or conceptually?
I believe that thought is the predominant element that is expressed through a concept. I was able and wanted to experiment with many artistic phases of research; in fact, I went through classical figurative painting, hyperrealism, figurative expressionism, and abstractionism to then arrive at a conceptual phenomenology. Assuming that art always represents the attachment of a message, cultural subtraction has, however produced an intellectual impoverishment so much so that an image is now more important than what it represents, and its intrinsic language appears predominant with respect to what it wants to mean.
Conceptual Art, which I would simply call Conceptualism for convenience, instead identifies its presence accomplished by virtue of its concepts. And it is precisely in the conceptual sphere that the concept, or the idea behind the work, holds a greater "value" than just the aesthetic-choreographic system and the related materials used for its creation. In Conceptual Art, the idea becomes the component and the founding parameter of "doing art" and constitutes the work of art in itself, even when it does not materialize physically.
Thought is, therefore, the main protagonist and the essence of conceptualism, and it is precisely this different approach, as well as the perception of developing a profound communicative language, that makes me think of it as a strength, at least in conceptual terms. Instead, in visual terms, the most incisive support still derives from the possibility of providing an image or a product that also has an aesthetic value and its own ability to present itself in a harmonious, elegant, and possibly even innovative way.
Fashion Victim, Digital work, 90x90 cm, 2023 © Luciano Caggianello
Anniversary for the permanent day of idiocy, Digital work, 90x90 cm, 2022 © Luciano Caggianello
How do you differentiate yours from the rest? In other words, what do you feel makes your work unique and truly your own?
Maybe there really isn't a defined or precise uniqueness, but we can highlight the personalization criteria through which every artist or creative person identifies or is identified.
Surely I have always dissociated myself from that tendency of critics who believed (and still believe it) that the so-called "stylistic figure" of an artist must be that of an apparent and formal visual coherence, or rather when an artist discovers the work "ingenious", or the one he likes most, then tends to repeat it ad infinitum. Vice versa, from my way of thinking, this presumed coherence means only a boring cloning of one's own standards, a huge error of evaluation, and also a demeaning conceptual superficiality.
Therefore I do not identify with this line of thought because redoing for life, or even only for a considerable period of time, the same works (or in any case works that have the same connotations and the same aesthetic elaborations) does not attract me, and therefore I prefer to always imagine different interventions also through distinct and different materials.
I believe that the "coherence" of an artist lies in his capacity for intellectual approach rather than in the sterile and insignificant replication of a work done better than others. Probably this attitude, which in my case derives from a sort of professional deformation (in fact, as an advertiser or designer, you have to have different and new ideas every day), exposes me to the negative criticism of many curators who want everything to be more linear and standardized, but I prefer to take this risk rather than make my relationship with creativity unhealthy.
DAILY WIMBLEDON Quotidiana, installation, 70x50 cm ca, 2020 © Luciano Caggianello
What's one essential element in your art?
The title. The issue of the title sometimes appears to be a topic of marginal interest because it seems to compensate for the sole and simple descriptive function as minimal support for the work itself. Therefore, whether landscape or still life, countryside or mountain panorama, the title does not incite any overt declaration of merit or added value. In these contextualizations, it must be remembered that there have been cyclically "artistic seasons" within which it was preferred to reset this identifying aspect by not attributing it a close contribution to the teaching and support of the work: it was the season of the "untitled." Conversely, when the caption explicitly intends to enrich, contradict, reveal, or counterbalance the state of being of the work, then the title assumes the indispensable role of captivating the ferryman in the viaticum of his emancipated path.
The title conveys an emphasis and dominance through a sort of alternative DOC, which we could translate as a Designation of Cultural Origin, suitable and effective in preventing the automatism of thought from arousing any concern. There is, in fact, discontinuous communication, perhaps even contradictory, between the verbal and the visual, so much so that the transparency of the word and the opacity of the image, the sound of the verb, and the silence of the icon become concrete.
The work often does not inaugurate an external or internal dimension, simply a projective framing beyond the dimension of itself, beyond the visual feature of its material purpose. The title then serves to surround and direct the reception, which becomes something external but still transcendent; it is a sort of virtual frame to support the presence in a metaphysical dimension. The title proposes, and sometimes certifies, a different spatial location, a reversal of perspective capable of transforming the act of looking into an act of understanding. The title represents a ready-made "Duchampian" memory through which the meaning of the work rests, not so much in its intrinsic quality as in the operation that supports it.
The center of gravity of this trigonometry, between the work, the visual, and the conceptual, is located outside the image, and in the announcement of the title, we obtain this perspective reversal capable of transforming looking at the work into being looked at by the work. The artist proposes to assume his role as author, while the viewer, as an artistic stunt double, becomes co-author since his gaze becomes the inscription in the other's perimeter, producing a copy of a vision already consumed by the artist same.
In conjunction with this "mutation" of the title, the work ceases to oppose that insignificant tinsel, which subtly underlay the undisputed charisma of the work and ends up neutralizing this incurable controversy. Thus a path with no way back is obtained because, in this new configuration, the "untitled" would appear as an empty absence, a gap, and a voluntary lack, which could not direct the viewer's gaze and intentions. The untitled would be just an empty frame that would give up the quoted sense of a strongly identifying instance and would abdicate the very role of the artist.
The final locution of the "untitled" comes to occupy a position without merit as it begins a journey without really completing it. Contrary to the rules of grammatical relationship, the title is not the premise of the work, but it is the work that entitles the title, i.e., the work often arises together with the title, above all in conceptual art (or visual poetry) where the title is often the work itself.
The title thus intervenes to sign the definition of the work, which is certified by its simple being such, preventing a different name from producing the same result, perhaps even casual, and identifying the thing. It becomes a form of awareness, not so much of the presence of the object (being there of the thing) as the presence of objectifying consciousness (having been there), formulating a new category of space-time and its modality of fruition.
CONCEPTUAL SHROUD, PAPER, 50X70 cm, 2023 © Luciano Caggianello
Is there still something you would like to experiment with? Or something new you would like to incorporate into your practice, like Crypto art?
Having already experimented with several materials, knowing and having deepened but also used all possible artistic techniques (from watercolor to drypoint), I probably only have to investigate Crypto more.
In fact, crypto art and its collateral development fascinate me a lot above all because by interacting, as an artist, with digital processing and creations, such a path would appear as the natural and direct consequence of this research. In recent years I have not dedicated enough time to delve into its mechanisms, and sometimes I feel held back by the lack of general information and perhaps also by the many scams inherent in the mechanisms of this parallel world. But still, I think it's an area that we definitely need to interact with.
What do you think about the art community and market?
Debating this issue would be quite interesting, but it would almost become the subject of an editorial discussion as it is a complex and stratified social phenomenon over time.
In Bauman's words, our society has melted away, and there are fewer references. What I can briefly say concerns the incontrovertible evidence of an absolute lack of true, rooted, and synergistic artistic communities. Suppose it is true that each artist represents a single perimeter of knowledge, individuality, and effectiveness. In that case, it is equally evident that many do not have the ability to communicate, accept. Esteem other colleagues smoothly and generally relate within a perimeter that orbits between a widespread narcissism and a personal self-absolution. It is enough to look at the interactions of artists with colleagues on social networks and how generally, they are reluctant to appreciate their work.
With regard to the market, on the other hand, even if there are multiple platforms and virtual realities that have allowed artists to promote themselves, at the same time, the ability and willingness on the part of gallery owners to become the fulcrum of this environment has been lost. In fact, the platforms have made it possible to increase the number of artists or presumed artists, and the galleries (although not all, fortunately) are completely absent in the scouting process so as to no longer hold this privilege which was once the secret for carrying out a necessary and adequate sorting. Perhaps the search for talent that was once held by galleries is now undertaken by magazines.
However, if someone thinks that I intend to limit the potential for individual expression, they are misrepresenting my thinking, and I would therefore like to make a further and objective clarification. I believe that art should not be "democratic" in the sense that precise requirements of value, talent, study, and suitability are needed to be able to practice it. In fact, just as owning a microscope does not make scientists, just as opening a tap does not make plumbers, and a book does not make an intellectual, it is easy to understand that certain paths, in terms of performance, are not equal. It takes effort, self-sacrifice, and commitment, and in this vein, dedication becomes a "non-democratic" parameter, as not everyone manages to make it an itinerary of virtue. And unfortunately, for these criteria, often, there is no adequate consideration, evaluation, and validation, especially in the artistic field. After all, today's society does not want a culture, even an artistic one, which enlightens and elevates the audience of users but prefers to have only customers to seduce, and therefore, a large percentage of artists (or presumed artists...) adapts to this pseudo-cultural horizon and the market by producing works of a low intellectual or simply choreographic level.
The Art without the content, installation, 28,5x28,5 cm, 2023 © Luciano Caggianello
Finally, any projects or exhibitions you are looking forward to this year?
To give you a more prosaic and direct answer, I will tell you that this year I was able to exhibit in Manhattan, in London, and at the Modigliani Foundation in Rome, but certainly, the project with which I will close the year, also for temporal reasons being scheduled for December, will be the Art Basel Miami 2023 fair.
Instead, to give you a more metaphysical answer, I want to tell you that in any case, regardless of the exhibitions, the consents, the appreciation, and even the feedback, my research moves in the context of a satisfying inner perspective, in a territory of the possible, of the uncertain but with precise although contestable references. This is understanding because I understand that glory, fame, and notoriety can be determined through wandering or cyclical trends. Instead, the will and determination of one's work have a more constant and less uncertain trend. Narcissism, which is the new "ethical adjustment" of our contemporaneity, does not unite me, does not belong to me, and does not represent me. This is definitely the project I intend to pursue this year but also the next ones.
Artist’s Talk
Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.
