Premio Combat Prize

€- No one believes that it is necessary to decipher photographs because everyone believes that he knows how to make them. -
Vilem Flusser
Having left my hometowns in Italy and USA necessitated me to increasingly rely on the use of digital technologies to maintain my relations with friends and family.
The ubiquitous use of cameras, built according to scientific and technical principles, are easy to handle but most everyone does not fathom the process one provokes when pressing the shutter release. The digital image we see, is made up of a complex code of characters. My intention is to highlight this technical aspect of the image by revealing its inherent fragility.
By altering the code of these files ( with text inspired by the original image ) - the digital DNA of the captured moment becomes fragmented in an unplanned manner. The resulting corrupted digital image is what I paint.
Most images today are the product of an apparatus that functions automatically and without our full understanding, we are in fact excluded from their function. In an attempt to create room for human intention in a world dominated by the apparatus I transpose the corrupted file of photographed people, places and scenes into the tangible reality of painting.