- Veronica Mazziotta
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
December 2, 2025
“The memory of surfaces: on body, matter, and representation in the art of
Giovanni Leonardo Bassan”
GIOVANNI LEONARTDO BASSAN, INTERVIEW BY VERONICA MAZZIOTTA
Ph. AMIR HAZIM
There is a form of silence that inhabits the painting of Giovanni Leonardo Bassan.It isn’t emptiness, but a suspended breath — the kind that precedes a gesture, a memory, a wound.In his works, the body is never fully present: it surfaces as a trace, as the memory of the matter that once held it.
Bassan, born in Marostica and based in Paris for years, has built a language in which painting becomes sculpture, the gesture becomes ritual, and the surface opens like a skin crossed by light.His materials — military fabrics, wool, raw pigments — carry with them the memory of time and vulnerability.
In his visual universe, fragility is not weakness, but a possibility for contact.There is a form of secular compassion in the way he looks at others, a grounded spirituality that ties painting to lived experience, to the rhythm of the city, to the intimacy of the body.In this conversation, Bassan reflects on time, matter, memory, and on how fashion and technology are reshaping contemporary sensibility.
V.M. Looking back at your path — from your design studies to your move to Paris, from your early experiments with textiles and sculpture to your international exhibitions — what moment would you consider a “point of no return” in your career, the moment you understood you would build your own painterly language?
G.L.B. My point of no return was undoubtedly my first exhibition, Project 89.It was a simple project, almost rudimentary — a hybrid between an exhibition and an open studio.After seeing a few small sketches, Michèle Lamy had given me access to the basement of one of her buildings to experiment freely and search for my own language.
From there, I invited a few artist friends to join me in the process and, after about six months of shared work, we decided to open the studio to the public.It was the first real moment in which I showed my works and paintings (all on paper, though with various experimentations). The response — surprisingly warm, from both the press and friends — made me realise that it was no longer just a personal exploration.
Something had shifted; it had become essential. I understood that I would continue experimenting, but that making the work visible was just as fundamental. Only through exhibiting the works did I feel the creative circle truly close.
V.M. Your painting has a physicality that is almost sculptural. What happens in your studio when the material begins to “resist” the gesture? Do you let the surface guide you, or do you fight with it?
G.L.B. This is one of the central themes of my research.I seek a sculptural physicality while keeping the painting on a two-dimensional plane.I build depth by adding layer upon layer of paint, as if they were geological strata oscillating between figuration and abstraction.
I usually work on raw linen, but the introduction of the French military blanket (100% wool) opened a completely new territory.Wool resists oil pigment; you need to create a medium that can penetrate it without suffocating it.
From this friction between surface and gesture, new possibilities emerge.I add plaster, clay — materials that allow me to sculpt within the painting itself.
This transition naturally led me to ceramics — a logical continuation. Sculpture is simply the extension of the canvas as it detaches from the wall and enters space.
Ph. AMIR HAZIM
V.M. Your work has long dialogued with fashion, from collaborations with maisons to shared visual projects. What fascinates you about this language, and where do you see the boundary — or the connection — between fashion and art today?
G.L.B.Many artists avoid this conversation, perhaps fearing that fashion might “contaminate” the institutional value of art.I don’t see it that way.I believe everything depends on the quality and integrity of the projects — on choosing the right ones for you.
My collaborations, from Comme des Garçons to Michèle Lamy and Rick Owens, have always been born from mutual recognition and a deep respect for art.If we think of Comme des Garçons, they have worked with figures like Cindy Sherman and Basquiat — proof that a serious, cultured, respectful dialogue can exist.
Multidisciplinarity is part of contemporary sensibility.Today it is much more understood and accepted than it was ten years ago.
V.M. In a time when digital images seem to saturate every space, your painting asserts the value of manual imperfection. Do you see the slowness of the gesture as a form of cultural resistance?
G.L.B.Yes, absolutely. But I also believe that slowness, manuality, and dedication to detail are a form of luxury — and of artistic value.
My paintings are built through figurative and abstract stratifications: a work can take up to six months because beneath the final image there are many others, hidden.
We live in a time of extremely short attention spans. My goal is to create images that do not exhaust themselves in ten or fifteen seconds, but continue to reveal themselves over time.
I like the idea of a work growing with the viewer, of new details emerging at each encounter, of multiple layers of reading coexisting.
Ph. AMIR HAZIM
V.M. Artificial intelligence is increasingly entering creative and visual processes. Does it intrigue you as a tool, or frighten you as a presence? Do you believe an algorithm can truly understand the human fragility you seek to represent?
G.L.B.Artificial intelligence fascinates and frightens me at the same time.Its cultural and technical potential is evolving at an astonishing speed — almost in a way that slips out of our hands.It’s an extraordinary technology, capable of transforming creative processes, but precisely for this reason it requires great awareness.
Personally, I am very curious to use it as a research tool (even technically), while maintaining a certain caution.At this stage, I don’t believe an algorithm can truly understand the human fragility I try to represent.It has no feelings, no vulnerability, no real emotional depth.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the very near future, it could imitate them with remarkable accuracy.AI is learning to replicate human experience with an almost unsettling level of detail.Even what is obscure, ambiguous, painful may soon be simulated with striking plausibility.
V.M. “Blue Temple” deeply moved me.
In this canvas, the light seems to come not from outside but from the bodies themselves, as if the skin were a site of revelation. The composition is immersed in a blue that feels less like a color and more like a mental atmosphere, almost a spiritual dimension.What kind of space were you trying to construct with Blue Temple — is it a place of memory, of care, or of initiation? And who are the figures that inhabit it for you?**
G.L.B. Blue Temple is one of the first works directly inspired by a Rick Owens collection, Temple, the SS26 men’s show.The power of that show — especially the finale with models suspended in metal structures — struck me deeply, like bodies abandoned to their own weight.I tried to translate that image into one of the layers of the painting.
The figures in the foreground come from candid backstage shots, intimate and unposed moments in which the models are captured in their distraction, their humanity.
The pigment is very dense and changes radically depending on the light: direct sun, artificial light, twilight.The painting breathes and shifts.
Even though the painting is built on few layers, the material is so intense that it feels much more complex.
For me, Blue Temple is a threshold space.It can be memory, care, or initiation.Its depth is open, ready to be interpreted by the viewer.
Ph. AMIR HAZIM
V.M. If you could imagine your ideal exhibition in an impossible place — a cathedral, an abandoned station, a human body — where would you place it, and which work would sit at the center?
G.L.B. I am deeply fascinated by nature, especially mountain landscapes.If I could imagine an exhibition in an impossible place, I would see it on a very high peak, in an almost ascetic environment.
I would work with a brutalist architecture inspired by Tadao Ando’s walls, or even carved directly into the rock.A contemporary cave, etched into the mountain, where the harshness of the landscape meets the essential purity of cement.
In this suspended space, I would display large-format works, layered, dense with pure and dark pigments yet saturated with color — works where figures and hues respond to natural light and the external climate.It would be a direct dialogue with the elements, a way to let the living matter of the painting breathe within an equally alive, unpredictable, and secluded context.
A place that is extreme, almost meditative, where fragility, the body, and matter resonate with the immensity of the landscape.
By Veronica Mazziotta
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