Inspired by everyday life or the news, Claudio Onorato creates works of art with a strong visual impact that tell us about the most problematic aspects of the contemporary world. A journey that unwinds between fairy tale and play, entering the field of politics and social issues
Claudio Onorato is an Italian artist, also internationally known, who uses poor materials to create real talking pictures that tell the most problematic aspects of today’s world. With his works, he invites people to exercise their imagination and does so by using the language of art and fairytales. The language of art is expressed through his unique ability to transform graphic design into cutouts and to multiply surfaces by creating emptiness: the ‘abyss’ into which we sink, but also the ‘fullness’ to which we cling like a lifebelt in the sea. Playing on transparencies, he creates living filigrees, which cannot stay, or can hardly stay, in the cage of a frame or hanging on a wall, because they have to breathe in space and let themselves be crossed by light and our gaze. The language of the fairy tale, on the other hand, which is expressed in his works, always tells a story, like a demiurge or perhaps, more simply, like a storyteller talking about us and our world, full of injustices and contradictions. And indeed, in his works we recognise important political and social themes – migration, the devastation of the environment and nature, the violence of power and the economy – addressed, however, with a narrative approach that is stronger and more authentic than an explicit and didactic discourse.
The theme of water
From 12 September to 4 October 2024, the artist held an exhibition at the Centrale dell’Acqua in Milan entitled ‘Ritagli di carta’ (Scraps of paper), at the end of which, some of the exhibited works became part of the Centrale dell’Acqua’s permanent collection, remaining visible to the public.
Water has always been a central part of Onorato’s work, just as paper is its constituent element. In this exhibition, the theme has been embodied in the context of our existence, even the most decadent part of society, with a critical analysis of the historical period we are currently going through, thus touching on environmental aspects and relations with the history of Milan.
We interviewed him, exclusively for Paper Industry World.
How would you define yourself, who is Claudio Onorato?
I am a curious spectator. I think we should have more lives so as not to miss anything of the world’s spectacle, renewing daily that childlike gaze within us, capable of capturing the beauty, passion, pain and incompleteness of our being.
What were the formations that most played a role in bringing you to what you do and are now?
I have always worked with curiosity, with an exploratory spirit, almost as if I were playing. Both when I was an architect, with the difficulties you can imagine in relation to satisfying the needs of clients, and over the last 30 years – caterpillar turned butterfly – in the non-commissioned realisation of my works of art. I recognise at a distance a great limitation of mine, if this can be considered as such, of course, of having allowed myself to get involved too often in a multitude of initiatives, which, when all was said and done, turned out to be less interesting than they wanted to appear. In short, I fell into a trap, like a butterfly in a spider’s web. I think of my work as the work of a demiurge, a man half earthly and half celestial: a being equally concrete and abstract, capable of assimilating and reinterpreting the different poetics of the time in which he lives, making them accessible to all, after having made them dialogue with technology and science.
Let’s talk about your technique: what tools do you use and how long does it take?
Over a period of 30 years, I have created different types of works, with different times and different techniques, in relation to my experiences and my life. Going back in time, from the 1990s to today, among the first works are the Figurine, inlaid pictures to be held in the hand, made in the space of an hour: they were created during the years of civil service, in hospital waiting rooms or in an ambulance, before or after a rescue operation. I then moved on to the War Paintings and the Animals series, made of honeycomb cardboard painted with oil paints and glued aluminum paper, conceived while listening to the radio news over the course of a day. They have flat hues and are constructed with rapid spreads of colour. The series of Coins, perforated boxes made from commercial packing boxes, using a magnifying glass and scalpel, on the rubber surface of a drafting table, over two/three days each. The same was true for the Fish, the Butterflies, the Trees of Life, however, made of black iron and corten steel. With the cheap cutter, starting with sheets of black opaque cardboard, I made – in one month’s work – the series of the Animal Totems, up to three meters high, the Labyrinths and the Assemblages, compositions of envelopes, staples and cardboard cut out and painted. I spent two months working on the New York Works, cut-outs made strictly of black cardboard, also known as Criss-crosses, and the Polychromes, sheets of cut-out colored cardboard, in which I described how some multinationals behave in the world. At the time of the Covid-19 pandemic – due to the severe constraints – the time to make a painting was further extended, becoming equal to a season. The four Pandemic Landscapes, exhibited at the 5th International Paper Biennial in Schio, were realised in one calendar year. Other installations, such as Albero delle Luci (Milan) or Giardino di Giovanna (Ferrara), took more than a year to complete.
A long and painstaking job: do you work alone or do you have assistants/students to whom you also pass on your knowledge?
My work, in its conception phase, the most creative phase lives in solitude and silence, it cannot be delegated. Another thing is its development and realisation, which involves an in-depth study of the technique used in individual cases. As the architect that I am, I consult with the most diverse craftsmen to realise works that are always different and create installations at the limits of what is possible. My first work has become the cut-out on paper, which sometimes, thanks to curious and enlightened clients, can involve the most disparate materials. But the first work is always on paper, handmade by me, like a prototype where one can read the signs of the drawing and the white pencil, and the graphic path necessary for its realisation.
What type of paper/paperboard do you prefer? With what characteristics?
I use sheets of opaque black cardboard, of different weights, strictly 70×100 cm, gluing the sides overlapping each other. Cut out strictly by hand, they create a complex structural web that is also a drawing. The painting thus becomes one of the pages of a large drawn book. Paper is a simply fantastic material: light, versatile, easily workable, its surface thus cut out reveals a precious world, more real than real, where the characters become the protagonists of the new space dedicated to them. There is a great strength in my works, almost contrasting with the material they are made of. The black colour makes them alive and easy to read. In museum spaces, but also when they are suspended in the air and in the sky. It is as if the potential of paper were taken to the extreme, but without distorting the material, thus giving life to an ethereal world that lives of light, shadows and reflections.
In an interview, you spoke of art as a way of recounting life: what is happening today, what we see on TV, what strikes us, talking about the contemporary lightly and trying to interest. Which works in this exhibition (or others) respond most to this need?
Some of the works presented in this exhibition have become the property of the Milan Water Museum, a public heritage site. These works are told in the form of enigmas, stories, riddles. They touch on issues of vital importance, such as climate change, increasingly violent weather phenomena, an increasingly less hospitable planet, epochal migrations, nature rebelling against fossil energy, and more. These are works that immerse us in a timeless universe in a dimension where past and future seem to coincide, where becoming is pure and without measure, where the real merges with the fantastic, where history is as real as it is imagined, where smiles and reflection alternate, as the curator and critic Elena Forin has written.
The work “Acqua!” is one of the works that will remain the property of the Centrale dell’Acqua, and it is particularly evocative because it tells a story without giving certain answers, dilating it in time and leaving the reader, or rather the user of the work, to find an answer and a meaning within himself: the location is the Piazza dei Mercanti in Milan, with its medieval well, so deep that it exceeds the frame of the painting. Attached to the end of the chain is the skeletal body of a prehistoric animal, located inside a second, small frame. A spaceship, reached by ladders, sits on the hanging roof in the foreground, in a deserted, seemingly uninhabited Milan. Silence dominates the scene. It is up to the young or the curious to find the enigma hidden in this story.
In transparency, the work dialogues with everything around it, including the play of light and shadow: when did you discover this technique?
In my life I have never discovered anything all at once. Everything has come about through long processes of gestation, dedication and time. I place the first technical discoveries in a fairly distant time, when one could not go online with a PC and compare oneself with artists from other worlds. I confess with a smile that in the 1990s I thought I was the only artist working on the transparency of paper, on satire, on storytelling, on the dematerialisation of matter. I was familiar with the works of Accardi, Dadamaino and Fontana. But it was other art. Then the world collapsed on me: I discovered the existence of works made of paper since the Chinese Middle Ages, a tradition of paper cutting in the Swiss Ticino and also in Japan. But overcoming my initial astonishment, with due calm, I analysed and verified how different the works were, and with different artistic content. In some cases they were celebratory, in others purely ornamental; some represented bucolic, therapeutic, purely autobiographical themes, almost never characterised by political or social satire, as is my way of working. Four years ago, the artist Ai Weiwei made a series of papercuts, at first glance very similar to mine made 20 years earlier, which actually told the story of his own life in an autobiographical way, using without fault (so I hope!) a way of working similar to mine.
‘Fantastic Cuts’: how did you use the language of fairy tales in this exhibition?
Through an apparently simple dialogue, I have included various political and social issues in the exhibition – migrations, the devastation of the environment and nature, the violence of power and the economy – trying to talk about them with a narrative and fabulous approach, which is strong and authentic. As Munari used to say, the work of a demiurge is capable of assimilating and reinterpreting the different poetics of a historical period, making them dialogue with the world of industry and new technologies.
What is the significance of the theme of water?
Water is a catalysing element that allows me to talk about our world (but not only) and the most diverse themes related to the existence of man and all of creation. The paper exhibition featured a total of 24 works, at two different times, on display for 7 months. I calculated that it took six years of consecutive work, with a cutter, without ever stopping, to create them all. To lighten this colossal work, I thought of creating a visionary aquarium in the entrance of the Water Centre, an environment where my multifaceted underwater Bestiary, created over the years, could be brought to life: sea and river fish inhabit the space and peacefully coexist together; above all, Icarus, who concluded his journey in the water, finding peace.
The artist
Claudio Onorato lives in Milan. He has worked in the art world for more than 30 years, ranging from painting, sculpture, installations and architecture. His works are often inspired by everyday life or news events that have caught his attention. The result can appear as an enchanted tale that winds its way between fable and play, entering into the realms of politics and social issues. Since 2000, his work has focused on paper cut-outs.
He has exhibited in numerous private (Galleria Anfiteatro Arte, Milan and Padua / Galleria Cortina, Milan / Onishi Gallery, New York / Kasia Kai Art Projects Gallery, Chicago / Camden Art Gallery, London) and institutional venues – both in Italy (Palazzo della Triennale, Palazzo della Permanente, Arengario, Milan / Galleria Cavour, Padua / Palazzo Fogazzaro, Schio) and abroad (Barcelona / Locarno / Berlin / London / Paris / Chicago / New York / Shizuoka).
Inside Fabbrica Orobia 15, a Milanese industrial area built in the 1920s, and now in his studio at Via Malaga, 4, Onorato has created ‘My Gallery’, a place of art and culture, periodically open to the public.