In his earlier works (2012-2017) FZ explored thermal paper (receipt paper) as a material for visual expression.
Fascinated by this material because developed for the industry, seen as a byproduct and a scrap material, often trashed immediately after a short lifespan, FZ focused on exploring the expressive potential of this medium, pushing the boundaries and its qualities while interacting with it in a ‘human’ way.
In FZ’s explorations the qualities that made thermal paper ‘fragile’ also made it special and somehow ‘human’, transcending its ‘volatile’ inner nature.
The traces on it will eventually fade due to UV-light, just like any other material, but the ways we interact with the paper have a more immediate and visible impact on the way the paper reacts, preserves its qualities, or ultimately decays.

Thermal paper has been the focus of FZ work for many years.
He developed his own methods of creating artwork using exlusively 
thermal paper without using any paint, ink or pigments.
By juxtaposing textures and isolating best shapes one next to each other, thermal paper is perceived as a completely different material, it’s very nature of ‘industrial by-product’ is elevated to semi-precious material, a contemporary veneer.
The delicate and specific ways of dealing with the material follow a methodology often used by skilled inlayers when dealing with semi-precious stones and woods.
These artworks will age and the same way precious material age through time: Despite the artificial nature of this material, the images will eventually fade and decay and change due to UV-light just like any other precious material.

The concept of surface is more complex than what it may seem at first: it’s not just the skin you quickly peel with your eyes, but the result of what lies deep down underneath.
Surface silently records time passing, mutations that occur, and transformations taking place. It registers things that have happened and encompasses dimensions you may not see, conceive or comprehend.
Thermal paper represents surface in its faceted nature, mysterious and full of contradictions. It is candid and immaculate as it is also ephemeral and delicate, artificial and deceitful, all in one.
U.T.S. (Under the Skin):
It is a series of artworks conceived as a visual and tactile voyage, in a never-ending dialogue between paper, the artificial world and the human touch.
The thermo-reactive surface of this paper becomes, at the same time, medium and topic of each artwok, unveiling new expressive and aesthetic potential.
None of the artworks involves added inks or dyes, as the colors are the result of the chemical reactions taking place are revealed within the paper itself, a visual representation of the material's hidden depths.
Result and new beginning. Consequence, limit and potential.
A journey made of many smaller stories, lying beyond the surface.

Abstract images coming from the digital aesthetics are translated by the artist into technically ambiguous pictures.
Different typologies of thermal paper are treated using different techniques to depict vector-graphics and digitally-processed images (overlay, gradient, clipping masks, vector graphics).
G.R.H.R (Goodbye Receipts / Hello Receipts):
The title is the artist’s way of suggesting the mutant nature of thermal paper, the only material used to produce and compose these images and the same material used in traditional receipts.
What apparently seems a banal digital images, quick to realize using digital softwares, becomes here a painstakingly long and intricate procedure.