Dialoghi di fumo represents an interesting research project that aims to unite various experiences and expressive techniques to explore a syncretic language through works in which traditional painting, contemporary technology, and performative moments coexist as a whole.

In this work, a large smoke, painted in oil on canvas, comes to life thanks to the use of new technologies. The installation has a sort of temporal beginning following the live ignition of a fire with flint and steel, as if to combine the oldest human gesture with contemporary technology.

The piece was created and presented for the first time during Stazione Creativa, at Spazio MIL, at the Carroponte in Sesto San Giovanni, from April 9 to May 12, 2016. This initiative accompanied the exhibition “STUDIO AZZURRO. Immagini sensibili” at the Palazzo Reale in Milan.

The installation should therefore be understood within the context of this initial exhibition, in a space where the dominant theme was work: carried out in the tradition of heavy mechanics, traversing historical periods linked to Italian industrial development, also marked by moments of production in the service of the war industry. Thus, it also conveys a social discourse, an approach where “art becomes politics.”

In this work, the smoke drifts across the canvas, allowing glimpses of images that relate to the industrial setting for which it was conceived: scorching spaces of forged iron, large crane hooks and scaffolding, workers amid clouds of steam, and then other smoke where bomb casings and warheads can be seen. And chemistry, with its colors that often tint the space dedicated to research in the service of production.