From the Show Essere o Identità 2004 Castel San Pietro (BO)

Spazio Officina Equipe Vittorio. Curator: Tommaso Neri

Interview published in the magazine Mythos, April 2004

Featured Artists Section: Tommaso Neri Mental Freedom As The Mother of Intuition by Benedetta Savioli

TN: "I don't do art to find a new identity but I do it to feel free from everything... it's like switching from darkness to light..."

BS: "What does your work consist in?"

TN : "In deconstructing everyday things in order to discover the essence hidden behind them, in discovering beauty and perfection lurking behind the façade of every object. All this means switching from interpretive darkness to emotional light."

BS: "In what way?"

TN: "They are photographic paintings, I start by looking at the reality that surrounds me and the camera, by definition tends to take pictures that deconstruct the world: it cuts away portions of reality that it finds impressive. Let's say that I "steal" pieces of the world that fascinate me, I try to find the limits of reality in these objects, then once found and overcome, I tend to summarise them. It's as if, through research, the toilet flush cleans itself from everyday use, from the line of thought that violently determines everything .... in order to be born once again".

BS: "Were we talking about the genesis before?

TN: "Yes I think so, if you start from the idea that an object is brought into the world from nothing. The artist's gaze, which is unique and the most important because it allows the artwork to exist physically. Such as what it transmits and how the artwork comes about? I think that too often we take advantage of the interpretive problem raised by polysemy, an interpretative freedom that today falls into expressive demagoguery, in lowering the level, in a fake freedom that instead of choosing the values to be increased, it omits them. I don't believe in nothingness and even the avant-guards were theoretical about themselves".

BS: "So what exactly do you propose?"

TN: "Mental freedom is like the mother of intuition, a new way of looking at the world, a spiritual journey, which has as its ultimate goal, the awareness of ourselves, of time and of emotional domain over rationality. In short, everyday life is like an art gallery where we are both spectators and protagonists".

BS: "Are the published images photographs?"

TN: "They are colour slides that are not retouched on the computer, printed on duratrans, a material that allows light to pass through, and mounted on two pieces of plexiglass to form "lightboxes" that is, luminous boxes. The dimensions of every image with the luminous frame are 64 x 94 cm and 136 x 206 cm."