Massimo views his sketches as artworks in their own right. He compares them to a \u201csupport language\u201d that opens out to the continuous refinement that occurs between media. Within his installations, they are poetic carriers that indicate his chosen paths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditionally, a sketch is the pretext for a future work. A project. Preliminary study, graphic notation, flash, connection. It offers the humble promise of an \u201cactual\u201d thing to come and simply points the way to it. Thought relies on the hand, and at this stage they follow one other, observing, becoming one. For Massimo, drawing helps him to push ideas further. Mostly, he sketches sculptures or installations. In fact, his drawings always refer to three-dimensional projects. But now, nothing is just a draft. Standing, sitting, planted, everything holds. Self-sustains, self-supports. Details\u200a\u2014\u200aorganic or architectonic\u200a\u2014\u200aabound. The felt pen presses in, leaving the first tentative pencil lines visible, each decision apparent. The hand seeks out this curious trace and lets it be what it is: a moment of free exploration. His sketches often occur in series, making them true documents of how a theme or an idea is worked through. Massimo thinks of sketching much like writing, \u201ca stylization, a synthesis, a fusion of elements that emerge from the back-and-forth movement between drawing and sculpture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing has its own special place in the overall history of Massimo\u2019s art practice, as experienced in his studio on Adam street. In Vitamin D<\/em>, Emma Dexter states that \u201cdrawing is a feeling, an attitude.\u201d This notion of emotional investment seems accurate. It is what Massimo\u2019s research and work have allowed me to glimpse and touch: the story of a single, grand composition, both strong and fragile, in which every line, whether graphite, black pen, ribbon, or string, whether drawn with a brush or performed as a gesture, whether structure or body, depicts the life of the artist inscribed on the blotting paper of the present moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from the French by Jo-Anne Balcaen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n