Julio Villani

Julio Villani was formed between São Paulo, where he grew up, and Paris, where he forged his identity as an artist. His deliberate choice for this unfolding and the constructive form he imprinted on it give his work a dynamic dimension, which is determined, paradoxically, by unity. Where others would be affected by division and dispersion, Villani finds material and reason for concentration and reunion, opening a path that strictly follows the obsession of a look that seeks to reveal the secret face of things. Thread, line, net, knot... Julio Villani’s art is inhabited by the idea of ​​bonding, counterpoint, sometimes opposition; it is built from the organization of a coming and going, of an exchange — and it is at the heart of this, in that “between-two”, that everything happens. The problem of identity, underlying his procedure, is apprehended by a whole work around memory. The recovery process adopted by the artist and the type of recycling to which he submits the objects he integrates is his way of bringing together two temporalities with the aim of constituting a new one. "Trois Échaffaudages pour un Portrait" consists of questioning who one is at an exact moment – ​​the exercise to which Julio Villani commits himself in his Scaffoldings for a portrait – his own – consists of trying to understand how the subject became the one he became. The self-referential piece, the foundation of the project – the conical shape, the two circles of different diameters connected by three rods – resembles a popular coffee strainer holder, on which the artist coupled various elements. The first construction was quickly followed by a second, to finally become a trilogy. Nothing prevents him from adding a fourth, a fifth, an nth scaffold to the set in the future. After all, the work of the self-portrait artist has no end; there is no definitive answer to the question "Who am I?" – and the search for oneself is likely to be always prolonged. Julio Villani, 1956 born in Marilia, São Paulo, lives and works between Paris and São Paulo.