Crystals and Artifacts

The work Crystals and Artifacts is part of the project Archaios Neos ‘Manifacturing’ the History.

Crystals and Artifacts, 2018. Watercolor on parchment paper, each work 18 x 34.5cm

The work consists of watercolour drawings on parchment paper. In an improbable and artificial encounter De Pinto simulates archaeological finds of crystals, stones and rocks that incorporate objects of common use or used in science, technology and industry.

The use of parchment paper is a direct tribute to the entire library of illuminated manuscripts, calligraphic codices that constitute the heritage of humanity.
In fact, the drawings recall the bizarre and metaphorical images of many medieval codices.
De Pinto does not hide in these drawings a smug attraction for the aesthetic, but rather makes them a code for reading the entire project.
After all, objects such as wristwatches are not only functional objects but become fickle collector’s vanity through the decorations and shapes they are given.

Exhibition: Enigma Variations: An Exhibition about Fluidity of Genre, 2021. MACT & CACT Museo e Centro d’Arte Contemporanea Ticino, Switzerland.

Archaios Neos
‘Manifacturing’ the History

The new project by De Pinto Archaios Neos, from the Greek Αρχαιος Νεως or “the ancient recent” or “the ancient new”, comes to life from the mixture of the product of Nature and the artifact by man.

The idea comes from his recent stay in the United States where this union between Nature and artifice is even more evident.
De Pinto has in fact stayed not only in New York City but has also travelled up most of the Hudson River both along the coast and by boat to his Atlantic estuary in New Jersey.
He brought a lot of photographic, audio and video material with him to the studio. Material that will become the subject of future works.

In the installation “Hydra’s whispering… a story of great Loves and old Battles” the landscape and the return of Nature/Artifact takes on epic tones. A battle between the poisons aroused by an underwater Hýdra and the metropolis that frantically flows incessantly in its unnatural artificial life, engulfing man and all his industrial archaeological finds.

Another part of the project named Crystals and Artifacts was made with watercolour drawings on parchment paper. In an improbable and artificial encounter De Pinto simulates archaeological finds of crystals, stones and rocks that incorporate objects of common use or used in science, technology and industry.

The use of parchment paper is a direct tribute to the entire library of illuminated manuscripts, calligraphic codices that constitute the heritage of humanity.
In fact, the drawings recall the bizarre and metaphorical images of many medieval codices.
De Pinto does not hide in these drawings a smug attraction for the aesthetic, but rather makes them a code for reading the entire project.
After all, objects such as wristwatches are not only functional objects but become fickle collector’s vanity through the decorations and shapes they are given.

The aesthetic becomes the factor that weaves the anthropological nature of our world, archaeology often gives us artifacts where the demarcation between Nature and Artifice is difficult to separate. Time changes and phagocytes in its natural structures the original shape of the artifact becoming a new object, a new artifice.

An essay by Gillo Dorfles, Artificio e Natura (Artifice and Nature), captures this aspect Man-Nature and Nature-Object based on the observation that man now lives surrounded by an artificial world made of artificial objects, coming to consider the machine not an unnatural reality, but an integral part of a new mechanized or electronically integrated nature.

De Pinto, sometimes in an ironic and blatantly unnatural way, assembles objects where naturalness is intrinsically linked to the artificial object, the starting point is the enormous quantity of objects that surround us, from the tools man uses in the various industrial fields to objects of beauty which adorn and embellish his living and working spaces.

Sources
– Giovanni Matteucci, L’artificio estetico, Moda e bello naturale (The aesthetic artifice, fashion and natural beauty) in Simmel and Adorno, Mimesis Edizioni, 2012, ISBN, 9788857514086
– Gillo Dorfles, Artificio e Natura (Artifice and Nature), Skira Paperbacks, 2012, ISBN 885721601
– Joseph Rykwert, Necessità dell’artificio (Need for artifice), Edizioni Comunità, ISBN 8824504213
– Dalla grotta naturale al tempio, tra natura e artificio: forma ed essenza del luogo sacro in Etruria durante l’età dei metalli, in Antropologia e Archeologia a confronto, Atti del 2° Congresso Internazionale di Studi. (From the natural cave to the temple, between nature and artifice: form and essence of the sacred place in Etruria during the age of metals, in Anthropology and Archaeology in comparison, Proceedings of the 2nd International Congress of Studies). 

Links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernaean_Hydra

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo6154969.html