“I like that in different moments the same artwork can hold different meanings to someone (and also to myself)”

AT: What are your favourite tools and materials for working?

AV: Researching tools and materials is essential for me to push forward my practice. The mark is central to my work and the use of a different tool or material has a great influence on its expressive possibilities. A different texture or feel, a different degree of control over a new media allows new meanings to come forward. So, even if I definitely have some favourites since a long time – like charcoal -, I am always looking for something new. For example, when I am abroad I always bring home things from different art stores and, once back in the studio, what I found can be the point of start for a whole new series of works, and in some ways I like the fact that I might not have the possibility to work with it again. For a long time I worked only with paper, pushing it to its limits by washing, scratching and painting it, but last year I started to use raw canvas, primed and unprimed, as a base for my drawings and that has opened a whole new territory of experimentation. Even if I do not consider my self as a painter, I feel like I have found my own way to deal with the canvas format and sort of breaking it down into something I love to work with. I also started to use oil and acrylics, mostly straight from the tube so that I can work with them with a quickness very similar to the one of drawing. For what concerns sculptures, I mostly use clay, but I am looking forward to start including new materials in my work.

AT: Do you leave your work open to interpretation? Or do you think the viewer should engage with your work in a specific way?

AV: I don’t want for my work to have a univocal reading. I want it to be direct but never self-explanatory. Since the focus of my practice is the realm of feelings, the inner side of the individual, there are few things that can be univocally described. I am interested in portraying the contradictions and the ambiguities that characterise our way of feeling and thinking, of relating with ourselves and with society, but not in explaining or simplifying them. I like that in different moments the same artwork can hold different meanings to someone (and also to myself), as if it was able to respond to the different states of mind of the viewer. A body, knotted into an impossible position, can represent a self-embrace as much as a paralysing doubt, a crossed out silhouette can be perceived as a gesture of erasure but also of liberation, it really depends on how the viewer relates to the work in a specific moment and that for me adds a great richness to the work.

AT: How do you feel while you are working? You think of the final result?

AV: When I work in the studio I try to avoid thinking too much about the final result. I want to put as little filter as possible between me and my work. If I think too much about how it will turn out, I will most certainly get stuck. Some of my favourite works have happened on the backside of a failed painting or as a last carefree attempt after a bad day in the studio.

AT: How do you understand when a work is finished?

AV: My process is pretty fast, I often consider the work finished as soon as I stop working on it, maybe in a couple of sessions. What actually takes long for me is to understand if the work is good or not, or how I can present it – like if I want to stretch it, hang it or leave it as it is. I might need to to look at it for days, sometimes months before deciding. Occasionally, I can re-work some pieces and get some great ideas out of it, but normally prefer to start from scratch if I feel something went wrong.

AT: Where does the inspiration for the work come from? Do you find inspiration outside or it’s all inside you?

AV: My work is very personal and deals a lot with my own feelings and sensations. Although it is also extremely influenced by what I observe in people around me, but even then, my interest is always about what happens inside, on the inner reaction to a given situation. Also words inspires me a lot, especially when taken out of context, so when they can still assume different meanings. I find words that catch my attentions in books, poems or even in lines from random conversations and I isolate them and try to visualize their multiple nuances and give them a physical representation. In the process I often get obsessed with some concepts that end up surfacing over and over again in my work.

AT: Do you think art can be learned or it is something innate?

AV: In my opinion art is a way of expressing oneself, or of expressing and communicating society, through a specific language which is visual. I think everyone needs to find an output for what they feel in order to stay sane and alive, but most effective way to achieve this way to might differ person to person. Everyone can be thought to draw an apple or a perfect horse, but that does not mean that any person will be ever able or interested in expressing something with it.

AT: There are any artists that influenced your works? Why?

AV: The unapologetically expressive work of Louise Bourgeois and the eloquence of materials of Eva Hesse, the marks and words of Twombly, Marlene Dumas’ writings in the book “Sweet Nothings”, the female forms by Picasso and De Kooning, which I am interested in seeing re-explored from a female perspective, and recently I got very inspired by the artistic unruliness of the wonderful Rose Wylie.

AT: How important is for you the role of social media?

AV: Even if I am a bit worried of what social media are doing to our way of relating to each other and with ourselves, I think that – if used only professionally – Instagram (the only social media I basically use) is a great way to connect with other artists and professionals from all over the world, regardless of where you are geographically based. So in that sense for me is and has been super important. Still, I don’t think it will ever be able to substitute the experience of looking at art in person or to visit an artist’s studio in real life, and it is tricky because it is easy to forget about it since it is so comfortable to have access to so much content in one place.

AT: What’s your opinion about the contemporary art system nowadays from your point of view as an artist?

AV: I am happy to see that a system which has been always excluding women and minorities (with some exceptions – but too few) is slowly starting to be more inclusive and correcting its mistakes, and I think this will bring a great enrichment to what we are used to see and to be confronted with when it comes to art, but also when in comes to culture in general. Beside this, the art system as a mirror of the art market does not interests me that much and I believe the most interesting things tend to happen on the fringes of it, so that is were I like to look.

AT: What do you find to be the most challenging or daunting thing about pursuing art? What is the most rewarding part of working as an artist?

AV: Well, it’s obviously hard to make living with art. And it is hard to keep yourself separated from your work, and don’t get hit too bad when something you make does not get the reception you hoped for. Pursuing art requires so much drive, almost a senseless one, but when you have the possibility to show your work and you see that it is actually communicating something to the viewer, for me that is the greatest reward.

AT: What do you do outside of painting?

AV: I’m trying to learn Swedish

AT: What are your goals and expectations for the future?

AV: My main goal is to try and keep on doing what I am doing and live from it.

Installation view, studio (2018)