SERIES:
MACULA /
Chinese Whispers
2017 - 2020

Chinese Whispers is an ongoing series of paintings and part of the MACULA Collection, inspired by narrations of the fictive visual perceptions and voice recordings of FZ’s mother.
The collection reflects on the 'interpretation' and ‘translation’ of a person’s perceptions and mark a journey from sensation, to perception, to language, to interpretation, to translation, to visual representation.
The paintings are figurative/abstract representations of immaterial perceptions, filtered through FZ’s own visual aesthetics.
Half way between very tactile paintings and digital image making,
they use colors (sometimes dull, sometimes highly contrasted) which seem to be flat and artificial, almost digitally printed, when approached from afar.
Analysing the visual structure of the painting the viewer notice its tactile nature, the thick layers of the shapes meticulously painted one on top of each other using acrylic pigments.
There is a contrast and a dialogue between the 'digital' aesthetic of the painting (which has been conceived using image editing softwares) and the 'tactile' way it's paint has been laid down, and the 'human' nature of the volatile perception it takes inspiration from.
Colors overlay into fictive transparencies connecting with the very nature of these visual perceptions, described as vibrating and superimposed on normal sight.

Chinese Whispers, 2017-2020
Collection View
You Look So Ugly, Now You Don’t, 2020
Him & Her (Somersault), 2020
Just Like Fishes in an Aquarium (Snakes), 2017
New Gramrmar, 2017

You Look So Ugly (Now You Don’t), 2020
Quadriptych
W 107 x H 133 cm (quadriptych)
W 53,5 x H 66,5 cm (each)
Acrylic paint on MDF board, clear varnish

Him & Her (Somersault), 2020
W 122 x 100 cm
Acrylic paint on marine wood, clear varnish

Just Like Fishes in an Aquarium (Snakes), 2017
W 122 x 100 cm
Acrylic paint on marine wood, clear varnish

  Francesco Zorzi is an Italian artist based in Amsterdam. His formal research is characterised by an abundance of materials and techniques, informed by his background in applied arts and further conceptualised within art. In an era of increasing interest in digital technologies, FZ diverse application are united by the quest for the qualities of what makes us ‘human’. His contemporary work explore aspects of perception and interpretation of reality, the inner-worlds we inhabit as subjects or a collective, and how we interact with them. FZ develops his visual and sculptural works as tools to interpret and reflect on how we navigate through reality as humans in the present times. His works are influenced directly by his fascinations, jumbling together in a flux of shapes and colours like in a kaleidoscope in perpetual movement. Color and tactility are elements always present in FZ research, as reality happens simultaneously as a duality of lightwaves and matter, fundamentally ambiguous, about interactions between things and how things interact with one another. Oftentimes introducing elements of evolution and reconfiguration in the way his works are put together, he creates a multitude of simultaneous points of view to convey the viewers a sense of active interpretation of what is in front of them, to meditate on the way they create a model of the world, which is different for everyone and in constant transformation. These interpretations can be read as reflections on human condition in the context of contemporary society, as well as his personal interest for scientific knowledge and quantum physics. Looking for new imaginary common grounds, or simply offering the viewer new playgrounds for exploration and wonder.