Sketches of Transition

Michele Bazzoli

I am an italian visual artist based between Italy and the Netherlands. Mainly working with sculpture and installation, in my practice I explore the creation of visual language as a way to relate to the transformations of our uncertain present. I see our times as shaped by contradictory and yet simultaneous movements, the agency of which leads to a paradoxical suspended transition and a constant state of in-betweenness. How is our indiviual sphere, our positioned and finite experience, connected to the global sphere of which we are part, and how can we think on a meso-level? Drawing inspiration from the ways in which these opposite movements can become manifest in my surrounding environment and experience, I combine different methods to interweave signs of growth and decay into blurred transitions where real and speculative, local and global dimensions melt together.

Introduction: Sketches of Transition

Sketches of Transition Installation view

Sketches of Transition Installation detail

Sketches of Transition Installation view

'Sketches of Transition' consists of a sculptural installation comprising several elements that have been concecived as a whole.

It is a work that I have developed throughout the whole master in parallel with other works. I began it before the pandemic and since then, it has changed a lot. So for me this work also quite reflects and embodies these two years and their transformations, both on a personal and a more global level.

Overall, in this work I researched a state of ambiguity, of in-betweenness, trying to avoid a clear definition and where the work may present itself more as a – so to say – contained constellation of references.
So there are these elements that are spreading into the space and they seem to grow and multiply as if they were sharing the same genome. Yet at the same time they are at different stage of completion and present signs we may attribute to debris of objects or remains of decaying architectures. Instead of rusting metal, for example, they show sanded and in part refined wooden surfaces instead, that might again bring to other imaginaries, in an interplay of tensions between different movements.

Are they growing or decaying?
Are they containers or the content itself? 
Are these real size? Or scaled objects?
Are they complete? Or some are parts missing?

I conceive them as sketches at the intersection between these opposites.