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Umberto Chiodi is one of the most original up and coming artists of his generation, and probably the most handsome. Inviting Swide into his studio we find more from this Gothic treasure.

Umberto Chiodi is the type of artist who answers the phone with the sentence, “Can you call me back, because I’m lost in my mind at the moment”. After exhibiting at the National Fine Art in Sofia and the Michael Shultz Gallery in Berlin, with his forthcoming Milan exhibition he’s changing his artistic path...

Artist Umberto Chiodi (above)

Umberto invited Swide into his studio with a glass of blood red pomegranate juice, served in a gothic style crystal glass. His house, full of knick-knacks and peculiar objects, includes African headgear that, “might have been used in a major Hollywood movie”...

YOUR HOUSE LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE YOUR WORK
I’m forced to have it like this; the space is so small that I have to fulfill it completely. I don’t work well here; it’s suffocating, even if it is a very organized mess.

YOU BELONG TO THE GENERATION THAT GREW UP WITH TV CARTOONS…
They really influenced me, just as the whole television production of that period which had an ambiguous and neo-baroque allure and appears in my work. Japanese cartoons that I watched growing up have always been related to the issue of a double-life - children changing identity thanks to magical fetishes.

Umberto's work/live space

DO YOU HAVE A DOUBLE LIFE TOO?
I’m trying.

SOME CRITICS HAVE ASSOCIATED YOUR WORK TO TIM BURTON’S FILMS. I SEE MORE OF A TARANTINO INFLUENCE. WHAT DO YOU THINK?
I don’t like the immediate association with Burton’s films. I appreciate him, above all his early work, but his world is a bit distressing, and Quentin Tarantino’s bloody scenes…he offers real violence.
When I paint something very organized I felt the need to ‘hurt it’, in this way I escape from becoming too romantic. Tim Burton’s romanticism is reactionary, anachronistic…

DO YOU HAVE A GUILTY PLEASURE?
Going to funfairs?

THAT’S NOT GUILTY ENOUGH…
I thought it was…let me think about it…

WHAT IS THE RELATION BETWEEN YOUR LIFE AND ART?
Now I’ll have to quote Baudelaire and I don’t want to! ”My everyday life is really surrounded by the frenzy art in my mind.”

DO YOU EVER HAVE A BREAK?
It’s hard.

DRINKS WITH FRIENDS?
Never.

Umberto's work

I KNOW YOU’VE DO BECAUSE I’VE SEEN YOU…WHEN YOU GO OUT DO YOU LET YOURSELF GO OR DO THINK OF YOUR NEXT WORK?
It’s hard to find “the ideal” on the streets…

BUT WITH YOUR FRIENDS…
I have no friends.

DON’T YOU HAVE ANY PEOPLE YOU LIKE AND RESPECT?
Well…yes

DO YOU NEVER HAVE A MOMENT FOR THEM?
I do everything a 28 years old boy does.

BUT DO YOU ENJOY GOING OUT?
Probably not, I’m somewhere else. I would like to feel I’m part of something, but I know that it’s hard for me.
 

Artist Umberto Chiodi

Interview and Pictures by Filippo Biondi

Umberto Chiodi, “Superfetation” (September 18th- November 7th); Studio d’Arte Cannaviello, Via Stoppani 15, Milano 20129

TAGS: umberto chiodi artist tim burton tarantino superfetation studio d’arte cannaviello