Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
I know a good artist called Margo Greb who is good at what you say, translating memory into artworks. About my own works, they are mostly about an emotion being made image. Memory, if it could have one at all, would have the role of connecting images coming from a possible undefined point in the past, or in time, to our actual moment. I like to play with our relationship with time in my paintings, but it is impersonal and undefined. Memory has little or no room in them. What my works could do is to bring someone back into a childhood memory or emotion, perhaps.
What is the role of technique in your practice? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating?
When I started transforming oil paint into things was practically my whole practice, it had a huge role. Now things have changed and technique is only a means to get to an idea. I like although to have enough technique so I have less limitations in rendering ideas into works. I think exploring technical possibilities of materials is also fun when one is a painter, and it is a boundary one can play around with which is fun.
How do you see the relationship between emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?
You do love deep questions! Well... I am definitely more inclined into producing works that can be 'understood' or felt more through an emotional window. I see the need for making work which is intellectually complex... it is just that intellectually obvious work is usually pretty bad in my opinion. I am including more and more intellectual ingredients in my works, although the emotional universe in definitely what drives more my practice. I think a work that is only intellectual and lacks emotion is bad, just like a person would be in this way. Pure intellectuality I think is more the realm of philosophy; art has the virtue to be emotional and to conduct feeling. But it also needs some intellectual component to be really good. Just like someone would.
Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Diego. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?
Thanks to you and congratulations on this great magazine and curating of artists. At the moment I am preparing and producing new work for a solo exhibition in Cyprus in 2020 as well as a participation in the Compassion collective project curated by Anne Simone Krüger, also for 2020. On this year I will be taking part in some group exhibitions including one to be held at Affenfaust Gallery in Hamburg about still lifes.
Work wise I am willing to keep pushing the boundaries of form, for example trying to deform them in a geometrical way. I also feel inclined to experiment more to have a more free style of painting with less detail regarding figurative accuracy and giving paint a bigger role in my representative works, perhaps surrendering form completely, at times.