Endless Creation (Simone Luschi interview)

Endless Creation

Love for the creative act above art itself

Interview with Simone Luschi,
2025 Guest Curator

Simone Luschi has chosen art as a lifestyle rather than a career path. So we will not bother to mention the exhibits, the international galleries, institutions and the cat­alogues in which his works are featured, not because his curriculum isn’t rich in im­portant recognitions, but because they are all far beyond the point of what he is trying to achieve through his practice.

Luschi has always preferred preserving his artistic freedom by sustaining himself with jobs outside the art world. His is a sparing lifestyle, I dare say austere! Any form of waste has been eliminated, be it of food resources, of energetic consumption, of art supplies and materials, and most of all of his time.

Simone Luschi, three days a week is a warehouse worker and since 2019 he’s em­ployed by All’Origine. The rest of his time, nearly in its entirety, is dedicated to an ar­tistic research that is free from any constraint. In a paradox which is only apparent, his total disinterest for an economic gain has led Simone to be extremely prolific and also recognizable across the many disciplines his art explores and hybridizes: painting, sculpture, illustration, design.

Luschi has a spurious approach yet a remarkably solid body of work. He explores many different visual vocabularies yet his art stands out for unity of vision. It appears to stem from chaotic juxtapositions of colors, archetypes, shapes and found materials which are then tempered by a sense of measure, of thoughtful parsimony, in a process of synthesis which might just be a reflection of his attitude towards anything superfluous.

Having Simone as Guest Curator means a lot to us: not only being finally able to share the work of a dear friend, but also getting some insight into the single artist who above everyone is familiar with the products inside our showroom and (spoiler alert) has been influenced in his practice by this day-job at All’Origine and has many times integrated our objects within his artworks. For several years we’ve been wanting to add Simone to the list of people we ask about their way of using old things to make something new.

Portrait by Luciano Paselli

G: At what age did you start making art? When did you decide to get serious about it?

 

S: I would not be able to say at which age I began, possibly because I really don’t see any difference in my approach towards the act of creation from my preschool years to the present day.
Drawing is something I’ve been doing since I was a very small child. I grew up surrounded by beautiful children’s books: my mother used to work as a nursery school teacher! She had a great collection of illustrated books which she would use to invent games and school projects. She would always involve me and soon I became her helper whenever it came to preparing new activities for her pupils. I also grew up observing the incredible technical drawings made by my father: giant cross sections of intricate gears and pipes he designed by hand with Rapidograph pens on tracing paper.
Never in my life I’ve been touched by the thought of giving up drawing. As a child the area of my room in which I did my homework naturally evolved into an art making station. My parents covered the wooden floor with carpet to save it from my experiments. I would also draw on walls in that corner, I painted them, tested my airbrush on them, soiled them in clay and other sculptural experiments.
When I eventually left my parents’ home my father painted my room over. I don’t know how many coats of paint were necessary but very many for sure. He had to use a chisel to remove all my sculptural experiments: I had not only ruined the walls and the carpet with clay but I had also tried sculpting with chewing gum with disastrous results. My parents were so permissive with me! If I think of the state in which I left my childhood room I feel like kicking myself in the rear!

Simone Luschi working on a sculptural head inside his old studio in Faenza (circa 2015). A layer of sawdust coating objects and walls evokes the image he described of his messy childhood bedroom.

S: I’d say the whole concept of “getting serious about my craft” is foreign to me. It’s a form of expression I knew from the start would be part of me for all my life so there never really was a shift in the way I thought about it. What really changed over time, but gradually and not suddenly, was the ability to make something that truly satisfied me. I spent endless hours testing and experimenting with anything I could think of, without any specific goal to pursue.

Over time I found myself more and more able to envision and make exactly what I wanted. When my works reached a level that fully convinced me is when I began showing them to other people and eventually even exhibiting them in places other than my studio.

Two-dimensional works by Simone often blur the border between painting and illustration. The desire to work in continuity with his childhood drawings shines bright through his skilful and mature compositions.

G: I would like to ask you about your academic training. Ceramics were your medium of choice, a material which is extremely popular in our area. So popular that the French to this day refer to glazed ceramic ware as “faience”, from the name of the our neighboring town Faenza, where you studied and lived for many years.

But you abandoned ceramics right after your diploma. What happened?

S: I remember choosing the Ballardini Ceramic Art Institute after attending an open day at the school. The historical building is massive, with laboratories and workshops on every floor: kilns in the basement, sculpting rooms, casting rooms, design stations and glass cabinets showcasing beautiful works by students of the past. Time proved this choice was right for me. I had the op­portunity to learn about this extraordinary medium that is clay in a stimulating environment, surrounded by students from all around the world who had chosen my same school for their ce­ramic studies. Their influences were very important in shaping my interpretation of ceramic art.

But ceramics are an intricate subject with a monumental heritage supported by knowledge that goes back thousands of years. It can be overwhelming. I realized how much ceramic art­ists can get involved in a never ending learning process. I for one held no interest for all the chemistry that goes into mastering the use of enamels, so I focused on shaping. As a shortcut I would use simple engobe finishes that don’t require a ceramic piece to undergo a second firing.

After my diploma I felt like all this complexity meant clay was not the right medium for me: any clay work requires a long time for completion, production costs are high because of materials, tools and energy consumption for firings. Lastly, working with ceramics requires a vision of the final product from the begin­ning: there is not much coming back after a piece has been shaped, let alone once it’s been fired. So I looked into different materials that were better suited for my impatient attitude to­wards creation and my desire to keep projects open as long as possible. I found that wood is what best enabled me to live the creative process with lightness and fun. Wood can be found (sometimes literally found for free) easily and in many different forms. One can work with virgin or reclaimed material but also with discarded artifacts that already have a shape. My wooden sculptures might never reach a final form because wood can be cut, glued and painted endless times and I want to take advan­tage of this possibility. This way of working is what enables me to achieve what I want, offering me the possibility to revise my pieces years later if I have stopped liking them.

With a plethora of previously prepared geometric elements, Simone experiments multiple possible configurations fora n artwork before crystalizing it in its “temporarily definitive” form.
A wall sculpture conceived as a sample book of wood blocks of different origin, with varying degrees of decay and refinement. 
An origami-like intervention on a wood panel from an old cabinet. The surface of the found object and its original lacquer are brought forward by modifications which only regard the orientation of portions of the original plane.

G: Your works feature many found objects: wood and particle board but also artifacts which are still perfectly recognizable after your intervention (parts from a violin, a comb, a wall mounted plant stand, the spout of a watering can, colored pencil stumps just to name a few). Beyond what has been shaped by mankind, you often turn your attention to nature. You work a lot with branches, dry leaves, stones. What is it in an object that makes you want to integrate it in one of your works?

S: The objects I feel more drawn to are always objects with traces of their story. Consciously or not I think we all feel something when we look at an object that looks warn, lived in: a surface with a story reminds us of the passing of time. Any life path, be it an actual living human body or an unassuming shipping pallet, bares signs of its unique story. Wear, scars, scratches and fading colors are the visual tell signs of anything that has been living for a while.

I gather and select materials in different ways and for dif­ferent purposes: boards or anything flat like a cabinet door will simply become a canvas to paint on. They are collected without much thought.

Natural elements I come across may amaze me for their intrinsic perfection: small branches, sticks and stones are col­lected if they look interesting to me. Sooner or later they always end up becoming part of a more complex sculpture.

For what regards the manmade artifacts I collect, some are so perfect I only want to celebrate them: I see them as perfect sculptures and feel like my job is to work around them and high­light what already exists. It’s a work meant to glorify certain ob­jects I come across.

Sometimes instead I feel the right thing to do is to replicate the shape of the object rather than use the found object itself.

Site-specific installation for Emanuele Dari and Enrico Brighi. A display cabinet showcasing a ceramic collection is elevated from its role as non-leading actor through a sculptural and pictorial intervention. At the same time the ceramic stars of this collection are called to share the limelight with objects made by Simone Luschi: sculptures, small sticks, a pencil stump. Any hierarchy is subverted. The piece of furniture, the objects from this collection, Simone’s intervention, all concur in forming a continuum.

G: You gather all these found objects and your studio is overflowing with things, materials, works in progress and works that are either finished or just waiting to be picked up again in a few years. At the same time you live with very little: few clothes, the same old hatchback since we met. How do hoarding and frugality coexist as different sides of your personality? Is it something that is reflected by your works?

 

S: It’s possibly not a rational thought, but I’ve never really seen my­self as a hoarder. I see the materials I gather as something that is very necessary for my future works.

The volume of things I’ve gathered is such because I’m pre­sented with too many great opportunities! A board of excellent wood may come completely free if it’s part of an old piece of furniture nobody wants. If I wanted to get a wood board from a supply store I would have to settle for much worse wood types and pay big money for it too. Recycling is way more logical, be­sides, the things I gather excite me as if I were a child finding Lego pieces on the ground along my way.

I’m also surrounded by my creations. It’s just a sign of all the time I’ve dedicated to making art and all the time I’ve not ded­icated to try selling it, partly because I’m too lazy for that and partly because I’m too attached to the things I make.

But I do see a paradox in having had to find myself a bigger studio where I can keep on creating and store all my things. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, but in the end I always tell myself this kind of arrangement is just what I need to live my life happily and fully satisfied. So as long as I feel this way, main­taining my big studio will be a top priority.

By the same token in my personal life I’ve set aside anything I consider superfluous, but I really don’t feel any kind of depriva­tion in my lifestyle.

A series that was born out of the accumulation of a number of small bottles, mainly old medicinal containers gathered by All’Origine. These green and ephemeral micro-architectures combine a small glass vessel, a carved wood solid and a flower.

G:Another only apparent contradiction: your contempt for consumerism is the reason for both a small empty home and a big overflowing studio! Here at All’Origine we all share the same feeling of not being able to pass up on anything that is about to be discarded. So, let’s allow ourselves a to get a bit self-referential now: how has working here influenced your art practice over the past five years?

 

S: I can say the first few years I felt overwhelmed by all the stimuli one gets from this place. As I said, I have a deep interest for anything that is old and used. The infinite quantity of such objects in this showroom and warehouse was hard to digest and metabolize.

One of my first tasks here, that really felt like it was influencing the way I work, was organizing books. During my early days at All’Origine Davide asked me to help him sort by color a gigantic pile of old volumes he had acquired. This is a task he loves to carry out personally and he is very good at it. I was instantly fascinated by the graphics on the front covers of these books: many are way more modern than most things you see on book covers today. Then I began discovering small personal notes, bookmarkers, pictures and handwritten letters inside many of the books. Lastly I discovered a new way of color mixing and matching. I’ve always tinkered a lot with color composition, but prior to this experience the quick way to do it was digitally. Working with these fabric clad books as physical color swatches was an entirely new experience. The subtle variations in color hue, given to each book by the different exposure to light it received, make no two colors perfectly identical. When arranging these books in a row on a shelf you are working with physically textured color elements punctuated by the typograpy forming the titles. Choosing an order based on a visual criterion is like composing an endless number of paintings, of horizontal sculptures.

But my tasks at All’Origine mostly revolve around packing and shipping: this enables me to handle a great number of objects in transit from All’Origine.
During my first couple of years here I only really observed and studied, out of respect for these objects’ beauty and their commercial value. Of a few I carved out copies from wood because I was so fascinated by their shape.

Then as time went by I understood that within any given product category there can be objects that stand out to me, that look so unique and special that I couldn’t even fathom to try imitating them. Luckily All’Origine is a place of generosity and I’m given the possibility to take some of my favorite objects home so in the future I will be able to integrate them in one of my sculptures.

One specific wall mounted plant stand among the hundreds I’ve handled, is the first object that stood out to me. It is in general a fascinating accessory in its simplicity, but that one in particular really struck me: the horizontal plane was perforated all around with small wooden pegs poking out the two sides. I immediately envisioned it as a little fence with a miniature world that could grow within it. So over time it’s what I built, carefully matching the original aquamarine color of the plant stand.

S: Another way in which All’Origine influenced me is reflected in my more complex installations. At All’Origine I am surrounded by continuously evolving compositions of objects, horizontal, vertical, organized by color, by typology or more composite and chaotic. All’Origine’s showroom is where I really felt moved not by a specific object but by a cluster of different things as a whole for the first time. It’s something I thought of a lot and tried analyzing. I really have to thank Corina Jucan for this: the ease and the playfulness she puts into her daily work of combining objects is a huge source of inspiration for me.

Among many spatial works my most important has to be Paesaggi Possibili, an installation I conceived in 2021 as a room with a busy layout of monochrome objects. It was featured as part of a short movie by my friend Massimo Garavini and after it was dismantled I reassembled it inside my studio as a single object.

“Paesaggi Possibili” installation for the exhibit “Musei Chiusi” (City museum of Fusignano, 2021) then rearranged in 2022 as a unique totemic sculpture with moving parts.

S: There is one more way in which I feel influenced by my work at All’Origine: the showroom hosts a number of pieces of anonymous art: embroideries, sculptures, paintings on canvass or on glass. My interest for this kind of outsider art has sensibly grown thanks to these findings.

A large semi-figurative sculptural object born out of discarded parts: a wooden tripod and wood from what used to be a small fence, damaged beyond the point of restoration.

G: There are two elements coming forward from your research method: firstly your intention not to crystallize your work in a definitive form. In this regard I was amazed when you showed me a childhood drawing you found and modified as an adult. Anyone else would probably consider such relic from their ancient past too precious to modify.

The second element is your passion for found objects. I notice that what your found objects have in common is some sort of intrinsic purity. Not in an aesthetic sense, but rather an intellec­tual purity: objects shaped by nature, by a previous function or even objects that were made with an artistic scope but never by someone with formal training, as goes for anonymous art and art made by children.

This doesn’t mean you’re not an avid consumer of “proper” art by artists with international rec­ognition. I would like to ask you who are the ones you feel more influenced by or whose vision you feel closest to. Can you give us ten names and a short motivation for the inclusion in your list, so we can get even more insight into your take on art and discover artists we may not be familiar with?

 

 

S: For sure I like to believe that whatever is driving me to create things today is the same force that was driving me as a child. And this is why my focus is on the creative act its self which I believe is the most important part about making art. This is also why a finished piece can always become the starting point for a new one. The emotion I got from making something can fade over time to the point that my urge to use it as a base for something new becomes stronger than the need to keep it the way it is.

For this very reason I’ve always found it incredibly difficult to attribute economic values to my works. Their true value regards a specific path that led them to look the way they do. A path which involves me but may also involve fortuitous and random events. I do not see the value of what I make as linked to an aes­thetic outcome, the size or the time it took me.

My influences don’t come only from the art world but from anything that stimulates my imagination: cinema, nature, music (which I always listen two while working). Visually speaking there are of course many artists whose work strikes me:

Francesco Bocchini. A unique style of storytelling that never fails to amaze me.

Mokichi Otsuka. A great source of inspiration. To have him as a classmate and see him at work was an incredible privilege.

Felice Varini. His work on perception is something I’ve often kept in mind while making art of my own.

Georges Rousse. Like with Varini I feel I’ve often tried to capture the essence of his art.

Eltono. Especially his early works such as “Astillas”, “Automatic Painting” and “Pubblico” made me think of the ways in which randomness can impact the outcome of an artwork.

Judith Scott. A symbol for artists finding in their practice a refuge from suffering and personal issues.

Richard Wilson. “Turning the Place Over” is one of my favorite installations ever. A starting point for many things I’ve made in the past few years.

Ron van der Ende. A unique sculptural style that looks more like painting.

Ted Larsen. A brilliant way of upcycling materials.

Antonio Ligabue. An outsider artist who brought wrong proportions and bad perspectives into the mainstream. Like him I admire all those artists who are driven by the urge of representing things without caring too much about refining the finer details, like all children do.

In 2024 Simone Luschi made “Il Collezionista” (The Collector) for All’Origine. It is a large sculptural object in the shape of a human head, stemming from the same research line as installations like the one for Dari and Brighi. But in this case there is a further degree of freedom as this work is meant to evolve continuously. Thanks to Corina Jucan’s collaboration Il Collezionista will keep on changing as long as it will be showcased inside our showroom. It will be used to display colored glassware, ceramics, books, and anything Corina has available. Of course we could just call it a fancy display cabinet but Il Collezionista is truly an embodiment of All’Origine: a compulsive hoarder that disperses his collections so he can start new ones each time.