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Writer's pictureJaamZIN Creative
Jan 21, 20193 min read

Painter Federico Cortese


ABANDONED ROOM Oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm, 2018. This painting was inspired by the metaphysical landscapes of De Chirico. I have always been fascinated by their clear vision of the architecture, with the precise design of the shadows, almost anticipating the modern use of three-dimensional modeling software. In the way I feel, however, more introverted and almost unsociable, the outer space is transformed into a closed one, private and protected, from which the human presence is totally gone away. In those rooms then, it may happen that some unexpected decorations appear, suggesting that the person who lives there has overcome the lack of relationship to the outside world with the richness and complexity of his inner world.
ABANDONED ROOM Oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm, 2018. This painting was inspired by the metaphysical landscapes of De Chirico. I have always been fascinated by their clear vision of the architecture, with the precise design of the shadows, almost anticipating the modern use of three-dimensional modeling software. In the way I feel, however, more introverted and almost unsociable, the outer space is transformed into a closed one, private and protected, from which the human presence is totally gone away. In those rooms then, it may happen that some unexpected decorations appear, suggesting that the person who lives there has overcome the lack of relationship to the outside world with the richness and complexity of his inner world.

I was born in 1971 in Turin, Italy, where I live and work as an artist. Since I can remember I have always drawn. My preferred techniques are classic oil on canvas paintings, and pencil drawings.


I’m like a mouse in its box. A little mouse safe in its shelter, that passes his time gnawing the food stored for the winter. But my food are the drawings. I work within my home. My studio is a room of the house in which I live. In this relatively small space are accumulated all the materials and equipment I need to draw and paint, but in a certain sense also the suggestions that inspire my work. Here are the desks and drawing boards, with brushes and paint colors, but also, on the walls or placed in closets, paintings and drawings (I think each finished work is always an inspiration for the next, in somehow). A great source of ideas are books and music, and of course the PC. The graphics programs and virtual modeling programs have become over the years a valuable support, but obviously the richest mine is the internet: a reservoir of images and ideas from which to draw, and in which we often are lost (in addition to photos of my own travels, all stored on the computer). It’s a small microcosm closed in on itself, rather impervious to the outside world (despite a large window with a beautiful view of Turin, almost always I work with the curtains closed). It is a bit as if the suggestions of the real world were allowed to enter here only after being filtered and digested, only after it has been already turned into experience. Exactly like a rat, eating quiet its supplies in its den, waiting for the end of winter.

IMAGINARY MAP OF NEW YORK Oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm, 2006. This painting belongs to a series of pieces that were inspired by satellite photographs that today, with tools like Google Earth, allow anyone the virtual exploration of the planet. Starting from those real images, I rework those aerial views, inventing new codes of representation and new decorative elements. The map is distorted, deformed, altered as if it were a past memory, but something of that place is still recognizable.
IMAGINARY MAP OF NEW YORK Oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm, 2006. This painting belongs to a series of pieces that were inspired by satellite photographs that today, with tools like Google Earth, allow anyone the virtual exploration of the planet. Starting from those real images, I rework those aerial views, inventing new codes of representation and new decorative elements. The map is distorted, deformed, altered as if it were a past memory, but something of that place is still recognizable.

In my artistic research I've always been attracted to all that is sortable, classifiable. Perhaps this attitude stems from a primordial insecurity, and perhaps the illusion of putting order into chaos eases this concern.

To start this game is sufficient to identify a subject that lends itself to variations, and the game consists precisely in identifying the rules that form the basis of possible changes. It’s a little like discovering a new language and trying to decipher the syntax, grammar, exceptions.


With these assumptions, it is easy to see that the subjects of this research can be the most different and in fact my designs ranging from butterfly collections to herbaria, from ancient bestiaries to manuals of anatomy, maps, human faces, hands, pornography, flags ... They are all languages having their own vocabulary, and my attempt is to isolate it and reinvent it, trying to generate new meanings.


Consider for example a road map or a map. They are born with a practical, precise purpose. Some graphic conventions, signs, symbols are chosen to represent on paper all the information that the map must contain. This at the end generates an aesthetics. What happens if I isolate this technique of representation from the purpose for which it was created and alter the rules that govern it? Does it continue to convey meaning? This meaning will be new and unexpected? Or for the reader this will be meaningless, as an unknown language?


My favorite painting techniques are oil paint on paper or canvas and graphite drawing. In general the work proceeds by sedimentation of successive layers, each layer adds something new, but at the same time covers something of the underlying layer.

VIRTUAL MODEL Oil on paper, 40 x 40 cm, 2015 I like to create imaginary worlds. Using the modeling software I invent virtual simplified realities, probably the result of travel memories and past experiences. I choose the types of buildings, I place them on a fictitious ground, check the colors to the various parts, the lights, the elements of the landscape. And then I choose a point of view and portray this place of fantasy. The traditional landscape painting has to deal with the atmospheric variables, with the mutability of natural light. Here, on the contrary, not only everything is static, but I can change the various elements at will: add or remove pieces, move something, try the effects of shadows depending on the movement of the lights. But it is a small difference, and also the difference between "real" reality and virtual reality is now small: it has become part of our daily lives, changed our way perceiving, somehow has itself become real.
VIRTUAL MODEL Oil on paper, 40 x 40 cm, 2015 I like to create imaginary worlds. Using the modeling software I invent virtual simplified realities, probably the result of travel memories and past experiences. I choose the types of buildings, I place them on a fictitious ground, check the colors to the various parts, the lights, the elements of the landscape. And then I choose a point of view and portray this place of fantasy. The traditional landscape painting has to deal with the atmospheric variables, with the mutability of natural light. Here, on the contrary, not only everything is static, but I can change the various elements at will: add or remove pieces, move something, try the effects of shadows depending on the movement of the lights. But it is a small difference, and also the difference between "real" reality and virtual reality is now small: it has become part of our daily lives, changed our way perceiving, somehow has itself become real.

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