What is a rock? Is it still a rock after human interference, even if artificial matter has been added?
In this series, the artist plays with the idea of the natural and the man-made. There is no life in the photographs and yet, the human presence is clearly perceptible. What exactly defines the natural? Is the idea of Nature a useful concept to understand the world? The project challenges the naive attitude towards the environment and the binary approach that separates the human and the natural, seemingly suggesting that it is worth developing and defining new possible forms of coexistence instead of thinking in terms of the preservation of nature.
The supports used in the creation of the series mixes glass, concrete and an extremely thin handmade paper; their opposite peculiarities convey a sense of fragility and the semi-transparency of the artworks implies something beyond the picture itself.
Artist: Diego Brambilla
Title: “Arbitrary interventions on abandoned rocks #2”
Year: 20 November 2018
Location: Italy
Size laminated glass: 48 × 0.4 × 58 cm
Size base (steel and concrete): 50 × 15 × 6 cm
Size artwork: 50 × 15 × 62 cm
Medium: Piezography® Pro on Handmade Superfine Bhutan 20 gr/m2
Laminated Glass: Extra clear white glass 2 × 2 mm
First edition of 5 + 2AP, Zürich
Numbered and signed by the artist
Delivery time: July 2023
Diego Brambilla is an Italian artist, based between London and Zürich, who graduated from the London College of Communication with an MA in photography in 2015. Previous education includes a BA in Sociology and a diploma in Film Direction.
Deliberately mixing real and imaginary, he stages fictional scenarios and experimentally combines photography with sculpture. Drawing upon contemporary narratives about nature, the human body or science, his work challenges those concepts as cultural products and investigates their ability to reconfigure the meaning within a constructed imagination.
His work has received the PhotoX award and it has been selected and shortlisted for several competitions such as Athens Photo Festival, Voies Off Arles and PhotogrVphy Grant and it has been exhibited many times in London and in Milan. His work has gained the attention of the media and it has been featured in many magazines, printed and online, such as Fisheye Magazine, GUP, Wired (US and Japan), Dailybest. It has been published in the Paris Opera booklet and got featured on Rai3 (national Italian television).
Diego Brambilla (*1978 / Italy)
Lives and works in Zürich
