Nicola Pecoraro works across mediums ranging from photography and painting to sculpture and video to produce works that are inspired by science fiction, German Romanticism and New Age art of the 1970’s. He works experimentally using materials like industrial paints and solvents, unfired clay and found objects, exploring and creating new dimensions of the natural world.
Lunar landscapes, cosmic storms, monoliths and portals are just some of the things we talked about…

Argh-t! : I notice you are reading, amongst other things, a book on the sublime. Is your work influenced by German Romanticism?

NP: There's definitely a nod towards Romanticism, but there's a lot of thought about time, also. I get influenced by what could be seen as a surrealist/futuristic aesthetic because a lot of what I see around me I find reminiscent of science fiction scenarios. The way a landscape can trigger a certain narrative in your head, even if it's on a microscopic level. It's also got to do with adaptation and identity.
I think the vernacular of science fiction makes sense within this context.


Argh-t!: Your work is a lot more abstract than it used to be. You used to paint a lot of faces. Can you explain the shift from figurative to non-figurative work, especially in your painting?

NP: That’s funny, I've never seen it as non-figurative.
When I started to make work, figuration was a way of entry for me but it also gave me the limitations I needed to explore a certain type of expression. I used the face as a rule from which to work from. These days my way of working just isn’t as literal, I guess.
The language of science fiction is just one way for me to resolve a narrative that has to do with the sublime; places that could be transcending time. That's just one way of reading it, though. I've always liked Robert Smithson's Monuments of Passaic: all the detritus and industrial obsolescence, which will become monumental in the future.


Argh-t!: Would you like to go into that a little bit?

NP: I walk around here at lot on my own picking up rocks and discarded objects and things like that and I just like the way things shift from their original function.
There's all these places and objects that were never meant to be like that, they don't have any function, they're sort of ‘weird natural’ because they've been made by man, but organic in that they've been left on their own to go through changes. It's a bit like in a garden or forest where the flow of things changes and everything takes on another function.

Argh-t!: But not through cultivation…

NP: No completely naturally, like maybe there's a bubble of asphalt and that breaks and then these roots come out and then rubbish goes in and gets covered by other rubbish and it all gets beaten down to a pulp but then there might be some broken glass next to it that looks like a crystal...so it' s kind of sublime. For me, it's a lot about having sublime visions within this landscape that isn't really meant to be seen like that at all.

Argh-t!: Rome must be a pretty big influence then?

NP: Yes. I mean that's why I like it here, because it's mostly ruins and it's definitely not at the centre of western culture, not anymore at least. It's very specific and it's very layered- you have all these different times, eras in front of you at the same time. But I'm also interested in this other unofficial layering…

Argh-t!: The layering that takes place on a smaller scale?

NP: Yeah, I just like that some things start off as man-made materials and how through time they've almost become part of some different landscape. I'm interested in the narrative that this can create.

Argh-t!: Like the brushed glass you get at the sea from discarded bottles?

NP: Kind of. Those have literally gone full-circle. They're in the process of reverting back to being pebbles which in turn will become sand, etc.


Argh-t!: What are the sculptures made of?

NP: Clay, and other stuff...bits of stuff I find on the streets, photographs, bits of wood and then I just paint them with this technique that's something I've developed: enamels with different solvents, other water based paints mixed with synthetics...it produces different reactions.
When you look at it, it looks like a chain of events…over which I have limited control.

Argh-t!: You talk about the importance of layers in your work, and how the architecture of Rome is an important influence on that. You also mentioned popular Surrealism- the juxtaposition of these brings to mind collage. Does the history of collage also belong to your set of influences?

NP: Yes but I try not to make the collage too obvious because collage is a dangerous field; it’s really easy to put two images together. You can do it safely, you know, you can have an intuition about two images or you can do it conceptually and I’d rather do the second thing because you will still get an intriguing composition. The interesting part, for me, comes from the space that is created in between the images.


Argh-t!: It seems to me that collage in your work acts as an opening, an entry to the world you are actually trying to show us. These points of entry take on different forms in ‘Waterfall Container’, say, and ‘Star Head Bleeder’ but in both instances they remind me of Fontana’s slashed canvases.

NP: Fontana’s ‘Spatial Concepts’ are about infinity so, I guess in that sense, they are similar but the ‘openings’ in my work are more akin to portals and monoliths.
It’s the same principle with my bleached photographs. You have one time frame, which is the image, and with the manipulation, the layering, you open up another time frame; with these I'm trying to get through what's behind the image. It has a lot to do with what gets triggered on a perception level when I go to these places- what isn’t there.


Argh-t!: What are you working on at the moment?

NP: There's a short story by Philip K Dick where he writes about this scientist who is trying to preserve all musical writing. To do this the scientist turns these scripts of Mozart etc into different animals. He then lets them loose and leaves for a while. On his return these animals are all wild and feral; they have turned from these domestic creatures into feral beings because they were left free to roam in this big garden and when he puts one of these animals back into the machine to revert it to a symphony it has become something unlistenable, a total cacophony. It's a great story.