Hello again. I recently met a famous Italian artist, Michele Trosso. He impressed
me with his unusual writing style, his judgment, and his love of life. Yes, we drank
coffee, however, as always being in different countries. But I could feel its colossal
energy. I’ll give you our coffee interview.

• MICHELLE, WHAT FAMILY TRADITIONS HAVE YOU BEEN RAISED ON? HOW DID
  YOU GET INTO ART?
  My parents are Italian, but I was born in Germany and lived there until the age of
  4, after which my family returns to Italy. My father had a restaurant business, I
  often sat in his bar for a long time and drew everything I saw, it was easy for me,
  these are innate talents that need to be trained and nurtured. Then fate took me
  aside, I graduated from a technical university and worked as a surveyor. However,
  the fire of art flared up again, I took up the brush again and entered the faculty of
  the Academy of Fine Arts of Catania. I started with small drawings of graffiti on A4
  paper, ink on paper, watercolors and tempera. I decided to study as additional
  research subjects, some in the anthropological, humanistic, philosophical fields,
  to better understand how our ancestors worked.
  – WHAT ARE YOUR TEACHERS AND PREFERENCES AMONG FAMOUS ARTISTS?
  I have read and watched so many works, both past and present. Here I used the
  works of de Kooning, Kokoskka, Ensor, Schifano, Rola, Kiefer, Cezanne, calling
  them spiritual and artistic “masters”. Each of them left an indelible mark. From
  abstract expressionism, I appreciate the instinctive virulence and some bright
  colors of yellows, reds, and blacks. From Schifano, I absorbed the ability for
  harmony and natural gesture. Kiefer’s power, matter, solemnity, monumentality,
  his ability to combine colors, visceral colors, Sienese earth, scorched earth, or
  Cassel earth.
  – YOUR ARTISTIC TECHNIQUES ARE QUITE UNUSUAL, WHAT IS THE REASON FOR
  THIS? IS THIS THE INNER STATE OF THE ARTIST?
  It depends on the painting cycle. I deal with machinery and materials, using rags,
  adhesives, paper, plastic, bitumen, cement, gauze, pigments, toys, threads,
  glazes, leaves, salt, ash and oil. The canvas is a second dermis and epidermis, with
  lumps, nodules, growths and secretions, realized and generated. These are gaps,
  living humus… While I draw, I only think about creating a work for modeling,
  painting becomes sculpture, these are material artifacts, pictosculptures with a
  thickness of 3-4 cm
  . WHAT INSPIRES YOU?
  Painting is the burning fire of being.

I have created so many painting cycles, the ideas cover several areas: nature, the
abyss, man, the galaxy, creation and its creator.
Inspiration comes by chance, by passion, or through specific readings. For
example, a cycle of shrubs, it inspires the ability of nature to create sculptures
that can mutate in time, generate and regenerate in perfect order, to realize in
order, balanced and lower, I love to live immersed in a wooded area.
Another painting cycle tells about ragged walls, because the wall is an “open
canvas” in which you can distinguish signs, gestures, breaks, lumps. The wall is the
first human language used in prehistoric times to explain hunting techniques and
deeper research in anthropology has explained that hieroglyphs not only tell
about everyday life, often describe rock carvings, mystical, esoteric and religious.
– YOU USE SUCH GORGEOUS FANTASTIC COLORS. THE COLOR FLOWS SMOOTHLY
FROM ONE TO THE OTHER … IS THIS YOUR WAY OF LIFE? IT’S INTRIGUING …
Painting comes to life because I use matter. First of all, I create a background, or
rather a pre-color, using something. A space made of bitumen, rags, leaves,
plastic, glue, silicone, cement, fine dust, toys. It’s the art of recycling, respecting
nature, because the particles introduced by man into the geosphere change the
ecosystem, so I retrain everything. Below, I create a pre-skin layer using strong
colors. I love red, blue, gold, ochre, Sienna, natural lands, green and yellow,
completely original and distinctive.
– YOUR STORIES ARE ABSTRACT, THEY CAUSE A LOT OF DIFFERENT EMOTIONS …
A STORM OF EMOTIONS … DO YOU PUT AN ADDITIONAL HIDDEN MEANING IN
THEM?
I wouldn’t call myself an abstract artist, because all artists are abstract. The word
abstract means to extrapolate from reality … This means that all artists are
abstract, because they extrapolate from reality. In my humble opinion, all artists
are conceptual, because when they create, they talk about themselves. Art is a
visual language, not just a decoration.
We humans have an ugly desire to deform nature, to force it, to change it, to
dress it to our liking, creating ecological disasters for living species and for
ourselves. We consider ourselves the seeds of God. Human technology is invasive.
So when I did a cycle of pindar flights, I included toy planes, which were sprays,
chemical traces, and nano-robots.

– YOUR WORKS ARE UNDOUBTEDLY OF A DEEP HUMANITARIAN NATURE. THEY
ARE VOLUMINOUS, AND THIS PUTS A MUCH MORE SENSUAL MEANING ON THEIR
PLOT THAN AT FIRST GLANCE. I WOULD CALL IT THE FLUIDITY OF IMAGES .. YOU

HOLD THE VIEWER’S EMOTIONS WITH THIS, FORCING THEM TO RETHINK THEIR
VIEWS AND POSITIONS.

• TELL US HOW OFTEN YOU PARTICIPATE IN EXHIBITIONS, SHOWS AND OTHER
  CREATIVE EVENTS
  I have exhibited a lot in the past, I quote some exhibitions: at the Biennale of
  Graphics in Perugia, at the 54th and 55th Venice Biennale, at the Biennale of
  Madeira (Portugal) and at the “International Exhibition of Environmental Art Tsai-
  MO” in Taiwan. In 2012, I participated in a traveling group called “Death”,
  dedicated to the theme of death (wars, diseases, natural disasters, famine in the
  world) and solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad . Now it causes an infopandemia.
  I LIKE THE WAY YOU DRAW TREES, OR EVEN MORE SO THEIR BRANCHES, AND
  HOW MUCH COLOR AND YOUR SOUL YOU PUT INTO THE MEANING OF THESE
  ALWAYS SIMPLE OBJECTS FOR PAINTINGS. THIS MAY BE YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL
  PROJECT. DEFINITELY. WHAT DO THE WORDS-THE ARTIST’S CONTRIBUTION TO
  THE WORLD ENVIRONMENT-MEAN TO YOU?
  Shrubs are archetypes, primitive patterns, natural sculptures, sinuous and
  iridescent forms in the ground. The background is always red, however, a unique
  red because I treat it several times like the alchemists of the past did, and then
  create trees. The genesis of trunks tells about the symbolism of a man and a
  woman, about a meeting, hieratic fetishes, about friendship, romance, eroticism,
  incomplete sexuality, esotericism, designed to find one’s own.
  MIKHAIL, YOUR WORK IS UNIQUE. EVEN IF SOMEONE WANTED TO REPEAT THEM,
  THEY COULDN’T DO IT. THEY ARE RICH AND DELICATE. I WOULD CALL THEM THE
  EMOTIONS OF ENERGY FLOWS.
  Thank you for your beautiful words. Each of us is unique. With their differences,
  convergences, divergences, passions, moods, feelings, hobbies, and empirical
  history. So every worldview is different. I tell my universe with my specific
  feature, my pictorial language is different from others. I try to absorb the painting
  techniques of other artists, do not copy or disguise. I am on my own, each of us is
  unique in its gesture, color, matter and sign.
  I LIKE YOUR THOUGHTS, YOUR STATEMENTS, THEY ARE ALL PHILOSOPHICAL.
  THAT’S WHAT YOUR SOUL TELLS ME. WHEN WE DRINK COFFEE, YOU ARE IN
  ITALY, AND I AM IN RUSSIA, WE ARE IN A COMMON SPACE. DRINKING COFFEE
  TOGETHER IS ALSO AN ART. Art has no borders, distances, or territories.