Damiano Boldrini

Boldrini was born in Genoa on 21 June 1990. He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Genoa, where he lives and works as an architect and illustrator.
In 2019 he began to work on a series of large format drawings, focused on the transfiguration of ancient cities, where he can express his passion for detail that he got from working on some small experiments at the time of the University.
A personal tendency to material minimalism, and a certain intolerance towards the processes of contemporary post-production, lead him to minimize the tools: a roll of very common plotter paper, a pencil for the preliminary stroke and a disposable ink pen for the final tracing and shading, in order to achieve a drawing materially poor but expressively elaborate, inspired by the chiaroscuro engravings of historical architecture and ancient manuals of natural sciences, for which he has always had the fascination.
So the unconscious but constant reflections on the passing of time, mixed with a multitude of visual and literary references, internalized in the course of life, lead him to re-imagine the great cities of the past, in a metaphorical exotic journey that, beginning with the time that was, he tries to look just as far into the time to come.
The results are ambivalent images: if at first glance they convey a sort of inscribed monumentality, up close they reveal a maze of spaces in light and shadow, of additions and subtractions, that tell of a very long transformation destined perhaps to never end.
He was selected among the finalists of the 16th edition of the Laguna Art Prize in Venice, and exhibited the original of the work "Carthage" in the group exhibition at the Arsenale in Venice from 11 March to 16 April 2023.