Gianni Caravaggio

Lives and works in Milan, Metropolitan City of Milan, Italy

Artist statement

Why doing something? While a few decades ago the question of "what to do" (Tolstoy's question which was later taken up by Lenin and Mario Merz) was considered fundamental to artistic progress, today it seems to me that this question has become redundant. It seems that everyone knows what and how to do, finding an immediate response in the various information channels, positioning themselves in a formal and content direction by adopting themes, forms and attitudes. That what appears to us as boundless research was actually already academicism? Regarding the question “what to do?” it seems more urgent to ask “why doing something?”. That is, what is the motivation that gives rise to our actions? We must remind ourselves with a phrase by Bruce Naumann that "The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths". This sentence tells us various things, it tells us that most probably the public may be not at first glance available and receptive as far as it concerns itself and therefore that the artist probably encounters a resistance. He also tells us that the artist does not meet the taste and beliefs of the public but helps them to have an unusual experience. It tells us that this unusual experience is in particular a mystical truth, that is, something that constitutes experience in itself which is profoundly beyond our everyday life and that is greater than the social dimension, it is precisely a mystical dimension, it is therefore transcendental. In this truth the human...

Artwork