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A.M.S.: Are your exteriors always shipyards?
A.P.: No, I’m currently painting city exteriors as well , including skies…. an ethereal element. The first water paintings were really interiors to some extent, because even with the presence of the horizon, the subject was a black, almost uterine container with figures in the water. In fact, maybe it’s only now that I have begun to actually paint exteriors.
A.M.S.: And what about ships?
A.P.: Back to my passion for industrial environments. I wanted to explore shipyards in particular because, unlike other industrial environments, they are not closed spaces. In other words, a shipyard actually is a factory, but huge, and in the open air, where you have everything, water and iron. The ships themselves are really impressive. From a great distance, they look like toys. But when you walk into a dry dock, you are right below the hull, with 40,000 tons over your head – it’s an incredible feeling. They make extraordinary subjects: strong and powerful but, at the same time, ethereal... I sense a sort of fragility in these enormous ships in dry dock, as if they were longing to sail somewhere. These great carriers, stuck there because they are so heavy out of the water. They look like dead animals. So you see it makes sense? Dead animals, carcasses, industrial archaeology: when I first started painting industrial interiors, I created a series called Reperti (Findings), representing abandoned industrial objects, archaeological remains, fossils.
A.M.S.: By introducing the subject of water, you also started analysing photographic or cinematographic sequences that convey the idea of movement (for instance in the series Trittici – Triptychs). Why haven’t you carried out the same kind of research on workplaces?
A.P.: These structures are the places where I act, a container from this point of view, the place where I move. It’s me who is moving: I wouldn’t feel like making a triptych out of it. Not because I feel it is motionless. Actually, I feel it is alive and moving with presences. And, as a matter of fact, I think my painting is animated because everything is quite vibrating and tense. This is what I mean when I speak of presences: but it’s me who is moving in this space and I’m there although I’m not there as a figure and there is no figure at all, the space is empty.
A.M.S.: Actually, in your paintings machines are always disused. Have you ever been in a factory where machines were working?
A.P.: Once I went to a place where some mechanical presses were working... It was frightening, like entering hell. It was a factory near Lecco, at least 100 years old. Inside, everything was black and dirty. The presses would come down with a terrible crash, so that even taking pictures was difficult. The movement of the presses made you – and the camera on its tripod – jump! Certainly there was no immobility at all in that place: all those people working in that deafening noise. But the painting that came out of that experience represented an empty space again... empty, well... as I explained before, such spaces are not empty to me.
A.M.S.: Which industrial sites mainly inspired your work?
A.P.: Around 1990 I photographed the harbour of Genoa. At that time, I painted the Reperti (Findings) series; 30-40 paintings that zoomed in on details rather than a wide-angle point of view. I took pictures of that harbour, but in the end, I painted pieces of rusting sheet metal, details of objects, chains for instance, and only a few industrial interiors.
In 1996 I took a lot of pictures of interiors in the surroundings of Lecco, and I also photographed Rotterdam harbour. There are a lot of interiors I was able to pictures of, either on purpose or by chance. For instance, some months ago I was in Holland, because Corus, one of the leading iron and steel companies in Europe, ordered a big painting of one of their blast furnaces for the month of June. So I took plenty of pictures. I’ve had several orders from industries. They ask me to create large paintings for meeting rooms and so on. The same companies whose factories are portrayed have bought a lot of my work. So, often a painting stays on its original industrial site. I like that.
A.M.S.: Do you feel that companies have understood your way of representing industrial subjects?
A.P.: Luckily, yes. I must say they grasped what I was looking for. The companies demonstrated their understanding by either showing me around the oldest parts of the factories or putting archive materials and records at my disposal.
