In front of my works you are all free to understand what you like

Variable and enigmatic: the definition of the art of Paola Pivi (Milan, 1971) opens her official website and immediately gives the idea of a multiform, surprising aesthetic, refractory to classifications and didactic readings. "The purpose of a work is to instantaneously transmit a vast amount of experience and knowledge," she explains. "If the mechanism works, the viewer emancipates his or her own capacity for thought. I would never, ever tell a person what they should feel or hear in front of a work of mine, or how to interpret it."

“Long timeno see” (2019).

First, therefore, astonishment and involvement; then, the opening up of possible subtexts that are triggered as afterthoughts. Thanks to this mechanism, there are many of Paola Pivi's creations that have managed to go beyond the circle of enthusiasts and gain the attention of the general public. Impressive aircraft, most recently A helicopter upside down, recently exhibited in the church of San Carlo in Cremona, colourful bears covered in feathers, tableaux vivants with animals as protagonists. "There is no rule: I use everything that is attractive - a pizza, a helicopter, the Statue of Liberty, a leopard... I don't think of my subjects as symbols, I think of sculpture". A direct approach that also contains an iconoclastic component. "In the case of aircraft, for example, the magic of flight comes into play, the desire to create a jolt in perception. But there is also an idea of sabotage. There was immediately a matrix of rebellion against the atrocious, disgusting, violent things that keep happening".

Un ritratto dell’artista.

As one of the few internationally famous names in contemporary Italian art, her success was quick and resounding. Which is even rarer in the case of a woman. "The difficulty for an artist was and is there, as in any field. I would be stupid not to recognise this just because I was able to establish myself. I am sure that even today a collector is willing to spend more for a man's work'. As early as 1999 he was awarded the Golden Lion for the best national pavilion at the Venice Biennial, where he returned in 2003. This was followed by a long series of exhibitions in major museums and entry into the stable of big-name galleries: Massimodecarlo, in whose Milan headquarters (a 1930s jewel designed by Piero Portaluppi) he received us, and the French Perrotin. The market now rewards her with quotations that reach 800,000 euro and she is currently preparing a solo exhibition for November at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth. Not an anthological exhibition ("I am too young for retrospectives"), but a dialogue between two monumental unpublished works and repertoire pieces. Yet his artistic destiny has waited a while to manifest itself. "As a girl I knew nothing about art, I was born an artist, but I ignored it. In my family, the generation before mine had erased art, which even my grandparents had practised. I had enrolled in Chemical Engineering, then in Nuclear Chemical Engineering, but I felt constrained. I dropped out, and had a lot of free time. In the meantime, I had started drawing almost by chance, reproducing figures by Walt Disney and Andrea Pazienza'. Before enrolling at Brera, another decisive step: 'I attended a life drawing workshop held by Enrico Lui. He had models on the table, expressive, muscular, beautiful, in particular poses that were difficult to maintain. We students were around the table, very close, you could even see the drops of sweat falling, in almost complete silence - the master did not tell us how to draw. The opposite of what I later saw at the Academy'.

“Camion” (1997), installazione per “Provincia – Mercato Globale, Fuori Uso” del 1997 a Montesilvano, Pescara.

A situation that is probably unimaginable today. Just as unimaginable is the art world she evokes, that of the first years of her career after her studies. "In the 1990s, we were moving in a wonderful world of pure research. Only insiders and enthusiasts knew what contemporary art meant. To find materials (a truck, three thousand cappuccino cups...) I used to say that they were for the cinema, to avoid mistrust and hostility". Another epochal change, the advent of the hyper-connected society. 'The privacy and freedom we had in the 1990s no longer exist. Today an artist has to be careful about which images he uses, or even which ones he keeps in his phone. Experimenting with images should be considered an intellectual activity, it should not be able to offend anyone'.

“One cup of cappuccino then I go” (2007), stampa di una fotodi Hugo Glendinning montata su alluminio, dalla performance omonima al Kunsthalle Basel.

His works with animals are among those that have most entered the imagination. "The initial inspiration came to me in Alicudi, where a fisherman had bought two ostriches to start a farm. From there I began to see animals - I had never particularly approached them before. It is even pointless for me to describe in words their extraordinary beauty and variety'. Given the almost unreal exceptionality of the scenes depicted, the question is inevitable: real-life realisation or digital construction? "Almost all from life. The photo of the donkey in the boat was taken at dawn, in analogue. Just as the leopard with the capuchins and the zebras in the mountains were photographed live. For the picture of the white animals in the meadow, we divided the species into groups that could tolerate proximity to each other, and then composed the total scene. In the case of the ostriches it was not possible to get two of them on the boat, one was photographed and then doubled in Photoshop. Today, however, I no longer use live animals, the only exception was in 2015, the horses on the Eiffel Tower, because they are used to living in symbiosis with humans. My role in society has changed, the world has changed and now I would find it inappropriate'.