Francesco Damiani
- Anna Lilli Garai
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Francesco Damiani builds his sculptures from simple ideas, but nothing about them feels fixed. His pieces are made to be moved, split, combined, rearranged. They don’t ask to be understood immediately—they ask to be lived with. You see how they sit, shift, lean. You notice the places where one part holds another, not with force, but with care.
His process often starts with intuition—what feels good to touch, what kind of balance feels right. From that point, things stay open. Shapes are modular and approachable. Surfaces are matte, quiet.
Colors show up in careful, sometimes hesitant ways: a soft blue tucked underneath, a faded yellow along an edge. Nothing shouts, and that feels intentional.
Papier-mâché is his material of choice—not for novelty, but for how it behaves. It’s light and flexible, easy to reshape, rework, take apart and start again. It doesn’t impose its own authority; instead, it allows him to test, to play, to respond. There’s a humility to it, and to his process. He’s not trying to impress—he’s trying to understand.
In works like the “Double Body” series, parts slide into each other—not perfectly, but just enough to hold. There’s tension and tenderness in how they meet. “Inner Life” does something else: what looks minimal and plain from the outside gives way to unexpected color and texture inside. It’s a quiet reveal—something private that doesn’t insist on being seen.
Francesco’s sculptures rarely take over a space. They don’t dominate; they inhabit. They move through rhythm, repetition, small shifts. They invite slowness. They ask you to look closely at how things connect and disconnect. The joints, the seams, the overlaps—they carry emotion without ever being figurative. Sometimes they feel like maps. Sometimes they feel like memory. They speak, not through narrative, but through presence. They hold something of the everyday—fragile, unfinished, but full of intent.
