ARTIST STATEMENT
Between presence and absence, the work activates space as a perceptual field.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Between presence and absence, the work activates space as a perceptual field.
Isaia Antonaci (born in Sesto San Giovanni, 1985) trained in Painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. His practice originates from a post-vandal aesthetic rooted in the underground scene and shaped by a long-standing engagement with martial arts. These experiences transformed gesture from an impulsive act into an essential, conscious, and meditative language.
At the core of his work lies the relationship between fullness and emptiness. Each piece becomes a space for listening, where matter and absence are held in balance and painting turns into an act of presence. Surfaces operate as fields of tension between interior and exterior, permanence and dissolution. Fragmentation and reconstruction emerge as ways of articulating experience through layers, fractures, transparencies, and silences.
Urban expression evolves into an introspective code. What was once urgency becomes suspension; the brutality of the sign is internalized into a disciplined visual language. Gesture is no longer affirmation, but listening—a refined presence in which identity emerges as a trace rather than an imposition.
As in martial practice, the pictorial action is not forced but allowed to happen. The work unfolds through restraint, generating minimal forms, suspended surfaces, and subtle marks that reflect time, memory, and perception.
INSTALLATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY SPACES
My work develops from an independent artistic practice while opening to dialogue with architecture, light, matter, and emptiness. Each intervention is conceived to transform space in a silent yet radical way, through a balance of gesture, sign, and suspension.
I work across variable formats, from intimate interventions to large-scale environmental works, adapting each piece to its context and to the relationship it establishes with those who inhabit or move through the space.
