Issue #73
Luca Artioli
Il Poeta Cacciatore Di Luce
“A nomadic artisan who travels the world capturing the most revered landmarks through his discerning camera lens: welcome to the life of Luca Artioli” A Milan born-and bred artist, poet and photographer recognized in Europe and around the world, Luca Artioli has worked for years in the most vital artistic circles of world culture, such as Hermès in Paris, La Scala Opera House in Milan, The Metropolitan Opera House in New York and Fendi in Miami during the Art Basel. A poet in possession of phenomenal range in emotion, Artioli has evolved over the years as an artist who is appreciated for both his skill with the pen as well as the camera. His original photographic and poetic research seeks to bring out the close relationship between the tensions of man and those of nature. In few years Artioli has published 11 books with Mondadori, the key publishing house in Italy.Since he moved from Milan to Miami in 2008, he started to collaborate even with US major interior and fashion designer, architects, construction companies and cruising lines that guest Art. For them he to match photos with their furniture, colors, shapes and volumes of houses and buildings, creating rendering to propose to the client. In particular cases we create unique peace of art furniture realized only in very limited edition.
My work is my fun so I constantly work with a sense of gratitude. I do travel a lot trying to capture even the most hidden beauty that shine around us. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes can be more complicated like the time I fell in a river with my ski at night when I was making picture of the moon’s reflection on the snow, or when I was almost captured by an avalanche…(you can see now these photos on the book Respiro Neve, I Breath Snow, Mondadori). I do make photos even of people. I am working now at a new project dedicated to the human depression. My first book on this matter was “Al di là del buio -Beyond the Dark” published by Mondadori. Now I am trying to organize a sort of Art Therapy Exhibition around USA. Next January I will do a personal exhibition at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach with photos of the WW1 trenches that I took in Italy on the Stelvio Pass last June. The exhibition will be part of the event Myth + Machine, the First World War in visual culture.
In 2008, after I collaborate with Hermés for an artistic project and after some photo exhibition abroad, I was ready to have a more international exposure. I choose Miami as the art scene was blooming since Art Basel came here more than 10 years ago and I thought it could be a easier city to show my work as it was a less competitive and saturated city in comparison with NYC. I came here without knowing anybody and it has been really very tough and difficult at the beginning. But soon I got a green card for extraordinary artistic ability so I could open Artioli Art & Design LLC. I got a great exposure with an interview on CBS and having my work on art magazine. Every thing was not calculate and happened by chance…I think it’s not me that choose Miami but Miami that choose me in some way…I have soon started to collaborate with major art galleries and interior designer. In the meantime the economy situation in Italy collapsed…Making new photo books or artisti/cultural events became (at least for me) almost impossible without an important sponsor. And sponsors like Banks or Institutions disappeared… It’s sad to say, but now I could not survive in Italy as an artist unfortunately. So I feel blessed that I had this opportunity to move in USA. But of course I love and miss my beautiful Italy tremendously! May be one day it would be possible to come back…
Finding an iguana in my patio, discovering dolphins in the bay just across the road. Finding myself swimming surrounded by hundred of thousand of fish that made the color of the ocean change from blue to black. One day I wrote a poem that represents all of that…
Ode to Miami.
I live into the Miami rooms,
the ones with the Art Deco Windows,
the ones with the vertigo glass like wall.
I live under the Miami sky,
where your breath enters that of the ocean.
and in the air passes,
impalpabile,
a dream.
I live into the Miami gardens
where flowers without a season,
bloom the road of hope.
Can you hear the fallings of thoughts?
free to fall into another flower?
I live into the Miami ocean.
It’s like floating in one thousands sea,
each of one brings to my soul solace, peace and strenght.
I live into the Miami clouds,
the ones that make ascend my heart into the winds of silence,
The ones the create unexpected chain of mountains.
If I close my eyes,
I can touch the snow.
I live into the Miami rain,
it quenches my thirst and cleans the fears.
Yes, I live in this earth of renaissance.
Thank you Miami.
The business opportunity that a city that it’s blooming can offer to everybody….the amazing weather that make me live in shorts almost all the year. Finding the ocean around the corner so that when I finish working I can get it’s energy and solace.
I am flattered to be included in the project and curious to see the artistic approach of Alexo and his interpretations of so many different Italian living in USA. Each of them with their own history to tell…each of them may be with a dream that became reality…
Italians are much appreciated in USA for their creativity, food…We all know that. I sell here sometimes photos from Italy and I am happy when I see a Venice or Rome photo in a local Museum, Art Gallery or on board of a cruise line, in the lobby of an hotel, in a private house…The beauty of my Italy travel in the world and enlighten wonder and curiosity around my Paese. I don’t know if this make me an ambassador of the italian style but I am happy and grateful that I can do this…
