THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE: DONATO PICCOLO’S ART OF THE INVISIBLE

Donato Piccolo’s art investigates various natural and emotional phenomena, often using technological and mechanical tools to create his works. Through a thorough study of human cognitive faculties, Piccolo’s art analyzes the perceptive aspects of the natural world. His artwork investigates natural, physical, biological, and scientific phenomena that are the basis of life, employing their emotional aspect as a tool.

In order to induce such a peculiar resonance phenomenon, most of the artist’s works combine two complementary and inseparable aspects: they are at the same time sculptures and machines, forms and processes. According to Donato Piccolo, this hybrid character constitutes the actual nature of “holistic art”: an art whose essential function is to explore “the incomprehensible mystery of the visible world.”

Hi Donato, how did your journey as an artist begin? What was your academic and family background? Was it more scientific or artistic? Where do you think you are in your journey right now?

Honestly, I wouldn’t know exactly when my journey started, as I’ve been focused on the visual aspect since I was a child, as if it were already a job for me—a space where I could not only express myself but also feel free from everything in society that necessarily had to make sense. Initially, I thought of art as the only thing that wasn’t confined to having a purpose and existed in the world as something useless, contrasting with the “mental functionalism” that surrounds us.

Who were your heroes when you were young? And who do you consider your mentors?

When I was young, my greatest mentor, the one who ignited in me the “sense of things,” the mental perspective of the aesthetic sense of life, was the artist Giacinto Cerone, who unfortunately passed away prematurely. From him, I learned the “poetry of events,” the hidden visual dynamic within a concept. Later, I followed the work of artists like Olafur Eliasson, Sol Lewitt, and Maurizio Mochetti—artists from whom I learned that Physics is merely a condition of humankind to justify space and time within ourselves. But despite all these mentors, it was my parents who instilled in me the visual responsibility of events, that is, the ability to evaluate things from many different perspectives.

My mother was my drive, and my father, my search…

As both an artist and a man of science, what role do you think an artist should have in society? Do you think it is more about deciphering the present or anticipating what is yet to come?

This question encompasses the very concept that underlies being an artist: the “Holistic Being,” a human capable of visualizing the totality of the world and becoming a spokesperson for its particularities. An artist should be an integral part of society, contributing to the construction of laws and values and having an influential role even in the politics of a state.

The artist and the scientist share many common points, as both analyze the present with a view toward the future. The role of the artist in society is as much predictive as it is reflective: the artist must look forward, urging the public to reflect on future possibilities while simultaneously decoding the present, exploring its dark or overlooked aspects in an increasingly fragmented world, where science and technology often advance without parallel ethical and artistic growth.

The artist balances the vision of the world with a broader and more inclusive sensitivity.

You seem incredibly fascinated by clouds. Where does this fascination come from? More from an interest in mythology, like Nephele and Empedocles, or more from a fascination with science, like chaos theory and the entropy cycle?

In clouds, you can find yourself. They are the artistic form that the sky has chosen to gift us. Tiny particles of water suspended in the atmosphere continuously offer us anthropomorphic shapes and visual metaphors. Interpreting clouds becomes a metaphor for emotions and states of mind, paralleling scientific descriptions in their instability and mutability. I see clouds as dynamic systems in constant transformation, where an imaginative system of one’s own energy unfolds.

I became passionate about clouds when I studied Mesopotamian civilization, particularly the myth of “Etana,” where, for the first time in history, a man, carried by an eagle, rose above the clouds to stand before the gods. In this story, for the first time, the earth was described from above—the world from another perspective—and clouds became essential for understanding the symbolism of a supernatural power.

However, as you rightly pointed out, clouds, like many phenomena and like art itself, embody chaos theory, where, in the changing initial conditions of a dynamic system, they display accumulations of energy, creating entropy between the degree of disorder and randomness within the same reference system. The irregular nature of an artistic process continuously draws on new resources, both formal and linguistic, and is a constantly evolving system.

Personally, I am attached to art as to the very pursuit of art to reach the “Invisible.”

You often refer to the concept of “knowing the invisible to understand the visible.” What does this mean to you? Is it an approach to science, the works of great masters, psychology and anthropology, or something beyond that? Would you consider yourself a spiritual person? What was your relationship with religion while growing up?

Art contains within itself the sense of the invisible, that is, the idea that visible phenomena are often manifestations of invisible realities or forces. Art, like philosophy and science, has always sought what lies behind things—the “Noumenon,” as the philosopher Immanuel Kant would have called it—that something whose existence is known but whose essence is unknown. It’s like a kind of intuition that there is something beyond things, the same intuition that makes a person religious. Perhaps that could be my religion.

To explain the concept better, an anecdote about the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence comes to mind: When Matisse created the paintings inside this church, he received a visit from Picasso, who criticized him for the superficiality of creating a church without being religious himself. Matisse replied that, in the end, every time we work on a piece of art, we pray in the same sense.

These words illuminated the meaning of my work for me.

When you refer to the millesimal movement of an electron representing the difference between two very unnatural events, do you believe in any form of determinism or fate?

More than in fate, I believe that every event, action, and thought is connected by a succession of circumstances. Every small external change leads to the transformation of a much more complex event.

We can consider it a kind of “Butterfly Effect,” in the words of Edward Lorenz, where every small change in one system necessarily brings about a change in another. Inspired by this theory, I have created many sculptures, including the one called “Butterfly Effect,” where I provided a tautological vision of the concept that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can create a storm in Texas. Practically, in art, the butterfly effect is a signal that is filtered and interpreted to change its original meaning.

In my work, a taxidermized butterfly moves artificially through electronic impulses, producing a small noise that is then amplified to almost become a storm. A signal transforms into something else, much like the very image of a painting.

You assisted Sol LeWitt when he was in Italy. How did you start working together, what kind of relationship did you have, and what influence did he have on your growth as an artist?

I think of his artistic greatness. I worked with him when I was young and followed his minimalist logic, where everything had to be “absolute,” free from human personality.

To achieve this, for example in the wall drawings, we had to paint with a repetitive mathematical logic, and LeWitt was not supposed to witness the process of creating the work, as it would alter its absolute nature. But I remember that once he broke this rule and came to see his works before they were finished, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. He came arm in arm with entrepreneur Giovanni Agnelli. It was a tender scene, seeing them, both in their later years, walking arm in arm like two old friends.

Over time, I understood what his art gave me: if there is a strong concept behind it, aesthetics do not need to be sought after—they come naturally, as they are two things that travel together and are impossible to separate.

LeWitt said he was greatly influenced by Masaccio, Giotto, and early Renaissance frescoes in his work. In your own work, however, there are very evident references to late Renaissance and Baroque art: between Cagnacci’s David and Goliath, Salvator Mundi, or Caravaggio’s Amor Vincit Omnia, what is your current relationship with modern art? Are you particularly connected to any period or movement?

Ancient art is what we need to understand contemporary art; otherwise, we risk falling fatally into trends. If the history of art is made by men, humanity is made up of events that transform and, in a certain sense, enlighten man in his understanding of the world. Since childhood, I’ve occasionally felt an attachment to a particular movement. On reflection, I’ve experienced artistic movements in relation to my age. I can tell you that every period of my life is accompanied by a specific aesthetic consideration tied to an art movement.

Over the years, though, I’ve become particularly attached to individual artists—the lone figures, who, in this realm of artistic solitude, are the ones with the most to say.

How do you view your relationship with your works once you’ve completed them? And, on the other hand, how do you view your relationship with your audience? Are they themselves part of the artistic creation or merely an element that enables its activation?

I like to think that the works have a life of their own. My goal is not to understand the object, but the viewing subject. Some of my works, like Video Machine Mobile, an old TV that walks, equipped with AI, and communicates through video, are intelligent sculptures that learn from the audience. By the end of the exhibition, the sculpture becomes the result of the myriad interactions and teachings from those who engaged with it, making it the outcome of a collective human social experiment. I sometimes tell myself that if, in the future, we can understand ourselves through the works, these works will become something other than what they were initially created for. After all, art has always been this.

However, I don’t consider interaction with the audience essential; in fact, often it confuses the public with its playful act of simulation. We are in a historical period where so many images capture our attention, and we often don’t have the time to absorb them. This is what, for example, can happen when an ordinary person visits a museum and is faced with a multitude of works, making it difficult to focus on any one in particular.

We could call it media or linguistic distraction, but it is precisely this that allows us to be human—fragile, inattentive humans.

There is an effect that robotics professor Masahiro Mori called the “Uncanny Valley,” the visceral feeling experienced in front of an animated robotic object with anthropomorphic features. Do you think this can be found in your works—a sense of existential angst in front of what is neither human nor machine?

I consider the “Uncanny Valley” a kind of contemporary Stendhal Syndrome—the awareness of being alone in front of a future we don’t recognize. Existence is fundamental to being human, just as technology is fundamental to being a thinking being. These two things, I believe, cannot be separated.

In my works, although the mediums used are technological, there is a search directed toward the human. I’m not trying to understand technology but what lies behind it. Humanity is the key to understanding the secrets of the universe, yet it can only offer itself human, non-absolute truths, simply because it is human. This, in my opinion, has sparked an imaginative drive in humanity, enabling it to further develop ideas and, thus, itself. Additionally, if art has always had the role of interpreting the world we live in, technology has altered human work, often replacing manual labor with mental effort. Yet we know that true aesthetic discoveries often come from that moment of illumination during the creation process when the artist realizes they are merely the vehicle for a message that is stronger than even they can understand.

It follows that, throughout this process of creating the work, the artist finds themselves having to engage with the immaterial to grasp the visible.

 

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Can you tell us something about your role in StrathosphereEffect? How does one go from exhibiting in Italian galleries to sending a probe into space?

I believe that, for an artist to achieve results, they must challenge themselves and the world around them. StrathosphereEffect is the need to go beyond. It all began when I met engineer Amedeo Lepore and his team. I realized that I could use their research in the stratosphere to create a kind of Butterfly Effect between the earthly world and space—a new aesthetic vision.

StrathosphereEffect is an aesthetic experiment that seeks to alter an individual’s spatial perception. A probe is sent into the stratosphere, and data is collected and processed in real-time to create a melody through intelligent software capable of translating spatial frequencies into acoustic instruments, which, when assembled, produce a composition.

This is the result of a series of frequencies composed by the Universe itself, whose intelligence we still do not fully understand.

In “Thinking The Unthinkable,” the robotic head delivers warnings to us lost humans, unable to distinguish between natural and artificial. Today, with the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, do you think this line will blur even further? Has your view on what you once called “artificial deficiency” changed?

Thinking The Unthinkable was a project created for the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, where I explored the concept of artificial intelligence through robotics. The centerpiece of the exhibition was a homeless man’s head placed under a table, issuing warnings to the world and highlighting the paradoxes of human existence. This installation was created in 2017, but now, with AI under greater scrutiny, it becomes even more intriguing as a concept.

The mechatronic head dispensed advice, aiming to raise public awareness about a future we are heading toward. For the first time, I used the term “Artificial Deficiency,” as the actions of a machine could only be the product of a series of human-created algorithms, where the variables used simulated intelligent but not conscious behavior. I sought to create sculptures that were also machines, simulating the workings of the human brain—a kind of visual ANN, an artificial neural network with images to analyze the mind and its mental processes.

The head produced statements that could be right or wrong, but they were the product of a simulated mental process. Certain fragments of its speech underscored human existential fragility. To cite a part of the speech;

 

“no problem, no problem, now the ship is in the hands of the cook, and we will no longer discuss the route, but only what will be eaten tomorrow… no problem…”