Paolo Mariani
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Aug 12
- 3 min read
Paolo Mariani builds his work from personal memories, places and feelings that stay with him. He often starts with quick notes in his agenda, then later turns them into layered pieces using paper, acrylic and color. His background in restoration and design gives him a practical way of working, but he leaves space for chance and play. Many of his works are tied to real experiences, like walking along a winter beach or doing a parachute jump. Titles such as "First Jump at Campoformido" or "San Zaccaria" show the connection between the artworks and the moments that shaped them.
Q: Your titles often refer to specific locations or events, like "First Jump at Campoformido" or "San Zaccaria." What role does naming play in shaping how we enter the work?
A: The title is never decorative. It marks a point in time and space where something essential happened—something I may not have fully understood in the moment, but that left a lasting imprint. Naming the work after that place or event is my way of grounding it. I don’t depict landscapes, but the work is rooted in an experience that occurred there, at that time. The title becomes a compass, not just for the viewer, but also for me—it’s a way of returning to a moment that demanded to be made visible.
Q: Movement and shifts in direction show up often in your practice. What keeps bringing you back to these ideas?
A: Movement is intrinsic to the way I live and observe the world. Whether it’s flying, walking, or even thinking, I experience life as a constant shift of forces—internal and external. These changes of direction, sometimes sudden, sometimes slow and fluid, mirror the way thoughts, emotions, and decisions evolve. In my work, this translates into formal shifts: layers, interruptions, rhythm. It’s not something I plan—it’s how I process what’s alive inside and around me.
Q: You’ve worked with restoration and design. How have those experiences shaped the way you approach structure and improvisation in your art?
A: Restoration taught me respect—for time, for fragility, for what already exists. Design, on the other hand, trained my eye for proportion, for balance and intention. Both practices gave me a strong sense of structure, but also made me aware that some of the most meaningful results happen when something breaks that structure.
In art, I embrace this tension: I build a framework, often very controlled, and then allow space for accidents, for gestures that disrupt or reframe it. It’s a dialogue—between order and intuition, between knowledge and the unknown.
Q: In works like "Maremma, Gulf of Baratti," color seems to hold memory. What draws you to certain tones or palettes?
A: Color is one of the most direct carriers of emotional memory. Sometimes a specific hue brings me back to a place, a smell, a sensation. Other times, it’s almost unconscious—I find myself choosing a palette and only later understand why. I’m drawn to contrasts, especially when they reveal tension: warm tones interrupted by something cooler, or soft transitions broken by a sharp accent. For me, color is not symbolic but sensorial. It holds memory. I don’t assign it meaning, but it resonates with a lived experience that still echoes within me.
Q: Your works often come from personal stories about places or memories. Why are these specific details important to you?
A: Because it is precisely in those seemingly marginal details that something essential is deposited.
My works never begin with an abstract idea, but with a concrete experience—often tied to a specific time and place, a fragment of reality that deeply moved me. This process is also rooted in my training, in my relationship with materials, and in the ongoing dialogue with architecture and restoration: there, I learned that every surface holds a memory, every structure speaks of what it has undergone. In this sense, specificity is never decorative; it is the threshold through which the personal can, at times, become shareable.
Details matter because they preserve the truth of lived experience, and bringing them into the work is, for me, an act of honesty toward that experience.
