After a few weeks of silent work, mighty visions, and personal investment, on December the 15th 2020, once a well-known Roman butcher's shop in Trastevere was transformed by Giorgia Garzilli and Diego Gualandris into a very peculiar exhibition space. The two artists have shaped inside of it a world where needs and desires merge in an uncanny spectacle, something very needed in those times...

The exhibition Boucherie starts from the outside, where seen from the window of the space, flashy sculptures catch the eyes of the walkers, the curious and the spectators. Chunks of fantastic creatures haunted from parallel dimensions, hung from the walls and are sold at meat-price by Maziar Firouzi, a butcher in fiction. The visitor gets lost and held back by experiencing the fantastic as intrinsically embedded in reality, while fictionally consuming and purchasing the ungraspable of the myth, tale, legend. Boucherie is a call to self-organize the resources and keep imagining in thought time of cancel culture and cultural postponement. I have asked a few questions to Giorgia and Diego about their practice as painters, their tales, characters and their need to collaborate.

Guide me through your vision: Do you give more attention to the peripheral or the central gaze? What does pick up your attention when you walk down the street, and what would you see (or of what colour would be the light) at the end of the tunnel?

Giorgia: I’m usually in an overthinking mood when I walk, so I hardly pay attention to everything happening around me. But at the same time I do it a lot. It’s just that I can be attentive only when I’m not. So, to answer the question, I’m more on the central gaze because it presents itself in that way thanks to the peripheral.
I imagine the peripheral as something more static than the central, like the setting of a movie scene. I look at the actress because of her dynamicity and in order to follow the story, but I know that If she looks and acts in a way it’s also due to the space where she is and the situations around her.

Diego: This question makes me think about chameleons. I think a chameleon could answer better than me, I don’t think I ever thought about it. It’s actually very dynamic, almost automatic, the transition from the central gaze to the peripheral gaze, and I think it’s more a brain issue than a purely visual one. Some objects born with the intent of dominating the central gaze, for example a monumental sculpture in a garden, pass immediately to the peripheral one when in front of that sculpture the spider that walks on your head will touch your eye. On the street I notice the obstacles, the one that diverts my movements, especially mental. Anyway, at the end of the tunnel, I really hope I don’t find that creepy gentleman I see every day outside my studio, who looks a lot like Dick Van Dike in Mary Poppins, but I think he’s right there.

How “the context”, deeply entangled in the imaginary building, with its blurs, influences the quality of your painting?

Giorgia: Context always makes me think about reactions; chemical, emotional, physical or psychological.

While I’m painting, at one point there is a moment in which something happens and I subvert my original idea by adding an x-element that turns it completely or partially; whatever it is, it’s a reaction of something that exist and could have been represented, but in that moment I just decided to leave it outside.
Let’s say I hate dancing while holding the glass.

Diego: For me the context always determines the nature of the work. I tend to work first on the context than on the painting, in the sense that I try to create a habitat within which I can act. It is the biological need to possess and be possessed by a place, the painting becomes a kind of viscous skin on which you glue the habitat.

First thought best thought: Does your subconscious move your hand? Does your dream activity leak in your paint?

Diego: Yes, it makes her dance annoyingly sometimes, but also other parts of the body and even more the thought. I have often found that the paintings I work on stimulate my dream activity, rather than the other way around.

Giorgia: It’s more a subsequent observation. It’s sure that somehow it does happen, but I realize it after a few days, months or years. When I finish a painting I need to take confidence with it, and once I do it, I can see in it many details that bring back things that are familiar to me. I take seriously the structure of a dream (when I remember it) that can help me in the organization of the work. But then I realize that if a dream is the soup of the last things that influenced my mind or things that struck my subconscious deeply, then my dreams depend on what I do, so I need to definitely made and taste a lot of delicacies.

Is it important for you to tell a story with paint, and what does your story tell about?

Giorgia: It’s a very long story hard for me to remember entirely, but for sure there was something about the underwater depths as red as the one we now see only inside the lids with the sun's rays coming to lighten it in flushes or flashes.

Diego: I’m sure there’s a story but I’m not sure what it’s about. I think the paintings are more like characters than stories. I like to see how they blend in with the context in which they live and the situations in which they are placed, the narratives are potentially endless.

Who are the characters of your paintings and who is your favourite/inspirational character in real life?

Giorgia: They prefer to be anonymous, I can only say they are all somehow connected. In my life I’ve been going through many inspirational figures since my persona expressed the need to have reference models. I have not a unique character. I can firmly say it’s my guru, because there are many people I admire for different things and from each of them I (try) to understand what I respect in them. Recently I watched the all saga of Star Wars in a week and I thought that the most interesting and concrete of the characters was R2-D2, but honestly I would have loved if his name was Barbra Streisand . By the way Steven Spielberg is an inspiring film director.

Diego: Some monstrous stuff. Walt Disney.

In which way the “promising monsters”, human, more than human and not-human, jump from your canvas and influence the spectator?

Giorgia: I hope that more than jumping, they could fly or swim. The figures appearing in my paintings are never entire. This is because I think that the view I decide to insert continues outside the canvas. In this way, those figures have the total freedom to decide the rest of their aspect and of their environment. The same freedom is served to the spectator. This attitude I guess comes from my past in video making that led me a lot in this way of organizing the content in the space.

Diego: I don't know how they do it, but there is a definite combination of events that makes it happen.
Sometimes in my paintings these figures appear completely diluted in the background, I really have to make an effort to define a subject because I see the painting itself as a monstrous subject, for me it’s like a presence able to see. The fact that the static image does not have a predetermined time of use, as opposed to a movie or a piece of music, makes it potentially infinite. It constantly reaffirms itself by standing still.

Whereas your paint would tickle more than one sensorial quality, which would be, smell, taste, touch or hearing?

Diego: Considering that smell, taste and touch are already qualities present in painting I would say hearing. Although it’s nice they don’t make any noise.

Giorgia: We just made some curator inspired ass-shaped cookies to be subjected to Mulino Bianco, made of chocolate and pears. You can smell, taste and touch them, but what you can really enjoy is hearing the melodious voice of this curator, which by the way is a dear friend.

Diego: They are really tasty.

I would be curious to taste one of your artist’s cookies, is the materiality of the artwork important for you?

Giorgia: It’s fundamental! Each ingredient has a reason, and their design is the result of several important considerations.

Diego: Yes of course. The cookies are finished but we could make others.

Do you believe that sculpture can be the 3D prosthesis or continuum of paint or vice versa?

Giorgia: Painting has been rediscussed and manipulated endlessly as if there is a kind of discomfort with it that reappears at regular or irregular intervals. I think a sculpture is a sculpture if you conceived it as a sculpture and a painting is a painting if you conceived it as painting. In the case of the site-specific works we made together, their structure was the support and we painted with glue and paper towels making layers and contrast in the same way you do with colour and oil. From this point of view it was an exercise of expanded painting, but I just realized it during the process.

Diego: Why not? In this case it was necessary for the success of the work. There it was an environment, almost a scenography that becomes one with the place. In its own way it can be traced back to painting, but it’s also something else.

Your work has recently merged in a 4 hands exhibition, from what does the idea of Boucherie stem?

Giorgia: I met Diego at his studio in Trastevere, which was once a butcher shop. We talked about the importance artist studios have and how fundamental they can be mostly in an historical moment such as this precise one. Besides, Rome was on the dance floor .
So, in a very playful but serious way, we decided to make it real.

Diego: We thought of making fantastic creatures, imaginatively edible, appetizing and real. Probably the first thing we thought of was the image of a butcher shop full of fantastic animals. We liked it instinctively and immediately started working on it.

I really appreciated the performativity in it. Can you spend some words about the character of the butcher, the one in charge of delivering fantastic pieces of meat?

Giorgia: We decided to have a performer we named Marzio, interpreted by the actor Maziar Firouzi, and we wrote for him a character: he’s a guy who found the job on “InfoJobs” and he doesn’t know anything at all, but the price, which was a fundamental point of the project. This attitude created in the visitors a sense of loss, since the clients’ need is to know what is in front of them and Marzio’s unpreparedness for their questions created an obstacle to their expectations. But then the same attitude allowed them to create their own narrative and a sense to what they were looking at. The most interesting encounters were the ones with people passing by by chance and stopped looking for answers.

Diego: One of the things I loved most about Boucherie was that every part of it has its own performative nature. The choice to give butcher’s shop prices, instead of "artworks" prices to the single pieces, has meant that also in the purchase a playful dimension has been established. The democratization of the exchange value of a work is also an issue that I would like to deepen in the future in my research.

Do you think that -in times of “crisis of the imagination”- the artist should organize the sensible in order to open up new doors?

Diego: With this project we had the opportunity to do what we wanted. It was an exhibition made in a private studio, so there were no constraints or compromises to be found with other institutional figures than ourselves. By this I don't mean that exhibitions are better only by freeing themselves from institutions, absolutely not. I'm just saying that the artist must be able to grant himself this freedom. Surely this would open other doors.

Giorgia: I agree with Diego, we talked a lot about this. It’s not about burning institutions, but about developing a skill that makes you aware of the infinite possibilities you have. It’s about risk and including the possibility of a complete failure. In my opinion the stronger works are those in balance on a very thin thread between amazing and shit which get the last light gust making it fall on the right side. This risk I think is fundamental to open up new doors.

Is it important for you to activate collective discourses and work together?

Diego: Yes and it was fundamental for this exhibition. There isn't a single piece that we haven't both contributed to in making. The realization, as well as the thought and the nature of the exhibition, were perfectly clear to us both from the start. Its construction has been very spontaneous.

Giorgia: This was the second time I worked 4 hands with another artist. After the first experiment I made with Natacha De Oliveira almost two years ago in Geneva, I decided to make collaborative works part of my practice. With Diego once we decided the approximate shapes and the number of each piece, we made them very fast. The interesting thing is that we didn’t set up a method at the beginning, but we created it during the process. Even some practical aspects were a revelation. For example after we started, we realized we didn’t need to use painting, because using just glue and coloured paper towels were giving a much better result and in a much shorter time. The part of this exemple that struck me is that being in two, gave us security to think we could make all those sculptures and paint them in a short time such as the one it took.

Did you receive any foundings? And if no, what did make you decide to do it anyway?

Diego: The exhibition was entirely self-produced. The materials were quite cheap so we didn't think about asking for funds. It also seemed like an opportunity to give a gift to visitors, to the street and to ourselves.

Giorgia: Yes, the exhibition was self-produced, but we sold almost all of it to reimburse the expenses entirely. Of course we made choices that allowed us to spend the less possible and have the best yield.
Many times we are discouraged by the economical aspect, but in my opinion an artist has all the skills needed to find out a way to make things happen. John Baldessari in a very nice video narrated by Tom Waits, affirms he believes that every young artist should know three things, and the first one is: talent is cheap. I took it very seriously.

Can we hope to see more collaborations as such in the future?

Giorgia: At dawn, look to the East.

Diego ...Gandalf said.