COLLAB W/ ABRAXASS

Hello Abraxass and welcome to the Ernesto Dolani community! How would you introduce yourself and your artistic practice?

"My name is Davide Fossati, I am a digital artist and art director, I live and work in Milan. The main idea behind my works is to create textures and patterns through the technique of digital collage. The themes/topics I mostly deal with are nature, bodies, death, violence, sex, often in relation to each other."

Central to your artistic research is the practice of digital collage. Where does the need to revive a practice whose history dates back long before the invention of digital technology come from?

"I found myself using this technique because it was the one that best lent itself to realizing certain visions I had in mind in terms of textures and patterns."

Ernesto Dolani's FW25 collection theme is "fluid." Personally, I believe that art is entirely transsexual (or genderless, de-gendered): not necessarily at a thematic level, but operationally, in that it blurs boundaries and shuffles heterogeneous elements, making impurity a manifesto that prohibits all isolation. Do you identify with such a vision? Did the choice of collage also stem from this?

"I identify with your vision, although as I said, I came to use this technique more for practical than theoretical reasons."

How do you select the elements for your collages?

"From each photo/combination of bodies and elements, I select the one that best preserves the tension and identity of the act or the nature of its origin (I initially took details from pornographic photos on the internet). The idea is to create something abstract from concrete elements, so that the eye sees without recognizing. From this perspective, my encounter with Daido Moriyama's 'Tights' series was crucial. In those photos, the physical element is aestheticized and made abstract while retaining its power and erotic charge. I try to do the same thing with my collages."

Shoes are a recurring element in fetishistic urges. What do you think is the reason for this privileged relationship between footwear and fetish? What role does fetishism play in your artistic practice?

"Although I consider myself largely a fetishist and have read several essays on the subject, I'm not sure I can give an exhaustive answer to this question. I think that just as the foot is a fetish of the sexual organ, the shoe is a fetish of the foot, with the added fact that it is also the casing that hides/creates distance and therefore desire. Furthermore, if one considers the symbolic value of trampling, the idea of the foot as the "lowest" part of the body, other dynamics related to the BDSM world also come into play, such as masochism, humiliation, etc. In my art-making, fetishism plays the same role as other elements such as violence, food, nature; these are things that interest me, question me, and which I therefore try to know/understand through art. They are also realities that in some way, even just on a visual level, make me feel something, or at least they did when I started this type of work."

To say goodbye: what are your future projects? Would you like to give our community a sneak peek?

"I'm working on creating a Porn Magazine inspired by 70s/80s pornography, a project I hope to launch by the end of the year, and in which I've involved several photographers and performers. I've always been struck by the care that used to go into pornographic sets in terms of makeup, set design, etc. The ambition is to recreate something similar, but updated and contaminated by some of my personal elements."