HANS-ULRICH OBRIST

INTERVIEWS GIANNI PIACENTINO

 

The artist’s studio, Turin.

 

Hans-Ulrich Obrist: Hello Gianni. I was up at Castello di Rivoli to see Frauen, Thomas Schütte’s exhibition. Did you see it?

Gianni Piacentino: To tell you the truth, I did. It was curated by Andrea Bellini—then co-director of the museum—and I felt I owed him something after I made him call off my show a few months ago, so I decided to go to Rivoli—one of the few times I’ve been. The exhibition will be held in any case, but at CAC in Geneva, still curated by Andrea. So much better.

Obrist: Don’t you often go to Castello di Rivoli?

Piacentino: I don’t think I’ve been more than three times in all. This Schütte exhibition is the second show I’ve seen at Rivoli in twenty or thirty years—I saw a stunning one of Alberto Burri years ago. They’ve never asked me to exhibit there, not even for the Torino Internazionale show. In those days I used to exhibit in New York and in Kassel too, for Documenta, and yet for the establishment here in Turin I simply didn’t exist. Marcello Levi, my collector friend, wrote a fine article on the Torino Internazionale exhibition, in which he also talked about me, but someone had him take out the reference: I wasn’t in the exhibition, so I couldn’t appear. When people asked me—always rather smugly—why I wasn’t there, I used to reply: “It appears I’m not good enough. But you do what you like—I couldn’t care less!”

Obrist: Gianni, what drew you to art? There was an extraordinary flourishing of artists in Turin in the 1950s and ‘60s...

Piacentino: I discovered Paul Klee, when I was about fourteen or fifteen, through one of my father’s colleagues, who used to make some very interesting paintings. I would go to the library, where I’d ask for a copy of Writings on Form and Design Theory and I’d read it very carefully and transcribe all the colour schemes. But perhaps I should talk to you about other things, about my passions—or obsessions?—like for stamps. I’m a great collector, and I’ve always collected stamps. Actually, I got really angry with Alighiero Boetti, who was a friend of mine at the time, because he used them in such a vulgar way. Stamps are important for me. Another passion: I used to spend hours and hours as a child looking at a shop window with oil colours and articles for artists. I used to draw very well then but I’d send my teachers round the bend. Actually, when I come to think of it, I’ve always been good at drawing. Since I was two, when I’d get down on the floor and draw, but in the end I didn’t really like it that much. As a teenager I used to go to the American library—here in Turin there’s an American consulate, and that’s where I found Art in America. I remember an argument with Aldo Mondino, who was furious when I saw a cover by Andy Warhol and said: “That’s an important artist.”

Obrist: What year was that?

Piacentino: It must have been in 1964. Basically, I started very young doing things in the footsteps of Klee and the early Miró—that sort of thing. I also loved building things and had lots of model cars and motorbikes.

Obrist: So there was Klee: the Klee of the Bauhaus, the Klee of little drawings, the Klee that makes the invisible visible...

Piacentino: I was mainly interested in the Klee who constructs the picture, quite naturally, with colour and line... And yet I was often disappointed when I saw his works in reality, especially because of their small size.

Obrist: Was this a sort of triggering element, a chain reaction?

Piacentino: Yes, and indeed it opened up great possibilities for me...

Obrist: There was little information back then, compared with these days?

Piacentino: Very little, but then maybe it was better like that.

Obrist: Apart from Klee, who was important for your development?

Piacentino: Michelangelo Pistoletto, I’d say; we were very good friends. My first show at Gian Enzo Sperone’s was practically set up by him. My father had died shortly before and I was still in a bit of a daze. Before that, I’d seen a great deal of Giulio Paolini and also of the gallery owner Luciano Pistoi, who in those days, for some reason, never took my work into consideration. He then discovered and appreciated it twenty-five years later and worked on it successfully (like at the Galerie Di Meo exhibition in Paris in 1991).

Obrist: Was it your first work?

Piacentino: Yes, four frame crossings, the longest of which is 180 cm, coated with three different types of paint. That was the time when, with Paolini too, we were trying to go beyond painting. I’d disassembled the frames with the idea of reaching towards the essentials, towards monochromy. Paolini went for the white framing of the sheet. Personally, I liked big formats. Look at these photos: the crossing of a frame painted in four colours; the pieces are made following the 45° miter cut of the frame. These works are all in the Onnasch Collection in Berlin.

Obrist: How did this invention come about?

Piacentino: It started from a question: “OK, this is the frame. What shall we do with it?” I love concrete things, so I want to see how the canvas is made. I used to have my frames specially made thicker by a carpenter. Technique is important. I was surprised to see that Paolini used little nails to fasten the canvas onto the frame, whereas I had a staple gun, even in 1965.

Obrist: So it wasn’t just makeshift, let’s say?

Piacentino: I’ve always tried to do things properly, using the most advanced techniques.

Obrist: Someone said: “Artists must use the techniques of their age.”

Piacentino: It depends on what sort of knowledge one has of the techniques of one’s age. It always takes a long time before technology reaches the masses.

Obrist: Did you question paintings? Was there also this moment of self-analysis with Paolini?

Piacentino: Yes, sure. It was always there: we needed to go beyond conceptual, mental limits. But I loved colours, in the physical, material sense.

Obrist: Basically, your generation came to the fore in the late 1950s…

Piacentino: I first emerged as an artist in the early 1960s. It was a very different world then. As I was saying, there was much less information around. For example, I used to read Marca 3. Some friends had a bookshop where I’d buy a copy, and I took the next without paying, as we were friends.

Obrist: But what were your relationships with Italian artists like? Before you, there was the generation of Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani.

Piacentino: I met Castellani through Pistoi in the 1960s, just as I met Jannis Kounellis too. Bear in mind that at the age of fifteen or sixteen I went to Pistoi’s gallery to help put up the René Magritte exhibition. Pistoi and Sperone were two landmark figures for me—possibly Pistoi the most. Gian Enzo discovered Pop Art thanks to Pistoletto, who himself had discovered it by chance when he happened to see some strange works being picked up outside Ileana Sonnabend’s gallery. He wasn’t someone who spent much time searching, and still isn’t today, in his New York gallery. When I consider his extraordinary beginnings, every now and then I think “Mamma mia, Gian Enzo, what exhibitions!” Pistoi, on the other hand, managed to do interesting, advanced things even after he turned sixty. He adored art but never really did good business because deep down he’d grown up as a man of the Left, and the idea that art had a “super value” was something he didn’t consider as serious or ethically acceptable. If I remember well, during his lifetime he only kept one stunning Cy Twombly, which then went to his ex-wife.See these monochromes of mine? They’re large works of special formats and colours, assembled together. They came about after a trip I went on with Pistoi, Paolini and Corrado Levi. First to Milan, to meet Lucio Fontana—Corrado bought his amazing silver paintings measuring two or three meters—then to see Piero della Francesca in Arezzo, during the Easter holidays. In the end, I went back home and thought about Fontana and Piero della Francesca’s colours, and said to myself: “Well, it’s easy then!” and I started making a whole series of monochromes, which were pretty crazy for the mindset of those days. People told me I was mad because I was making four-meter works at a time when in Italy no one was making big works like that. Look at these works, for example: they weren’t seen much, but then I restored them in 1975 because Onnasch wanted to see them put right. Just think: I still have the original colours.

Obrist: So you then started working with Onnasch...

Piacentino: Onnasch discovered my work in 1970, at a show at Toselli’s in Milan, where Pistoletto and Maurizio Mochetti were also exhibiting. I remember Toselli saying to me: “What the heck, they didn’t invite you to the Biennale—we’ll put on a big show and do something that’ll really stun the world.” I decided to make thirty little vehicles, all different. This was my first idea of decorations with bandings—like motorcycle fuel tanks of 1920s and ‘30s—and there were two shelves with thirty of these objects, which caused quite a stir back then in 1970. Mochetti was supposed to show new things, but ended up exhibiting works from the previous year. Pistoletto’s initial idea seemed brilliant to me: he’d just bought a house in Liguria, where they paint the vertical spaces between steps with coloured shapes. He said: “I’ll make large pictures out of lots of thin canvases, all joined together by these coloured paintings.” On the last day before the show he still hadn’t made anything, so he turned the canvases round and bound them together, writing some “famous words. ” That’s when I understood that one of the elements of Pistoletto’s work is laziness as a creative method. At the time, he was shifting from drawing (in his mirror pictures) to screen prints. I’ve always had the idea that you need to work to create art. You need to sweat. For about twenty years now, lots of people have been saying to me: “What do you mean? You make your works yourself when you could have them made?” I reply saying that I want to keep control of the material reality of the work mainly because I like polishing and painting metals (like a coachbuilder), but also I think the work requires the inertia of the person who physically makes it and not just of the one who thinks it up.

Obrist: It started out with the monochromes and crosses. So many things all came together, all in such a short time…

Piacentino: Yes, sure. A few years previously, Sonnabend and Sperone had come round to my studio. I’d made some monochromes with large sheets of coloured paper, which I later threw away.

Obrist: What brought Sonnabend to Italy in the 1960s?

Piacentino: She came for commercial reasons. She and Leo Castelli were promoting Pop Art in Europe, and Sperone was their point of reference in this country. As I was saying, it was Pistoletto—represented by Sonnabend—who showed the Pop artists to Sperone. There are some incredible stories behind our careers and those of our gallery directors, some extraordinary coincidences that are far more interesting than what was told about us later on. Arte Povera itself started out as an initial, spontaneous marketing operation by a group of young artists who met every Saturday at Sperone’s to talk about art. Germano Celant’s label was a theoretical intuition applied to something that already existed.

Obrist: Ileana came to see you, Piero Gilardi and Pistoletto in Turin?

Piacentino: Yes, sure. Talking about me, she once said to Sperone: “Keep an eye on this kid, he’s doing something similar to a group of young American artists.” She was clearly referring to the minimalists. Ileana knew John McCracken, a West Coast Minimalist with whom I had something in common in my work, even though I’d never seen any of his. But in those days Sperone only knew Pop Art. When we decided to put on the famous Arte abitabile [Inhabitable Art] exhibition in 1966, I made some sculptures—minimal objects—and Gian Enzo said to me: “Ah, I like those. Think about putting on a solo display.” That’s when I started working seriously as an artist. I’d just left university, where I’d been studying philosophy for a couple of years.

Obrist: What sort of philosophy was that?

Piacentino: Aesthetics, of course, with Gianni Vattimo, but he knew nothing about modern and contemporary art. He once put on a sort of seminar on posters in art and I took along the original of Fontana’s “Manifesto Bianco” (White Manifesto. We are continuing the evolution of art, Buenos Aires, 1946). No one knew what it was and the level of ignorance at the university was incredible. I was really sick of it.

Obrist: The professor too was ignorant?

Piacentino: Yes, even though Vattimo was one of the more open-minded ones...

Obrist: What was the next step after your early monochromes?

Piacentino: After the monochromes came the simple, minimal structures of “Inhabitable Art,” in which I theorised an elementary drawing in space with colour. Until that time, in Italy—and possibly in Europe—no one had yet heard about minimalism. One example is this purple 7 x 7 cm L-shaped structure, which was 4.2 meters long. It went from a corner in Sperone’s gallery and reached exactly to the centre.

Obrist: You were twenty-one in 1966. At the turn of the 1960s in Italy, Francesco Lo Savio was taking an interest in minimal structures. Did you know him?

Piacentino: Not much, only vaguely. But in the 1970s I saw to the restoration of one of his works for the Galleria Stein because, for the Arte Povera group, I was the expert in paints and varnishes. Actually, I painted the balls that floated on a column full of water in one of Giovanni Anselmo’s very first works, because nobody else was able to paint polystyrene, and the balls naturally had to be light in order to float. I also painted some of Alighiero Boetti’s multiples, but in the end he didn’t like them because they were too precise.

Obrist: Works by you, Gilardi and Pistoletto were shown in Inhabitable Art. Who else was there?

Piacentino: There were Pistoletto’s first Minus Objects and some interesting works by Gilardi—much more interesting than his Nature-carpets, in my view. He had made a sort of tower with scaffolding tubes, which were later used by Gilberto Zorio, his young assistant, in one of his first works. The atmosphere and enthusiasm was incredible, with a desire to try out and discuss and research. After Inhabitable Art Sperone offered me a solo show in the autumn, which then became December because I was always late.

Obrist: There’s a lot of talk these days about the relationship between art and design. Was there an interest in this back then?

Piacentino: For fifteen years, many gallery owners and critics told me my work was design, not art. I didn’t care about that. I wanted the freedom to do the things I felt were most interesting, without any dogma or paranoia. I also made a laminated table that I could use just as a table, to eat at. These sculptures came about as minimal coloured structures: I was always thinking of colour, neatly ordered in space.

Obrist: So there was this idea that there can be a shift from an unusable object to a usable one? From the value of the work to the use value of an object?

Piacentino: Not exactly. I started out from symbolic ideas: the “post,” for example, is the idea of the vertical line; the “X” is that of the three dimensions. Then I thought of using as geometrical symbols the things we see every day, but that we don’t even realise we see. And that’s when the “table” came about, naturally made in a very elementary way, in 1966, and the “portal,” always changing some measurements, and then a sort of “lectern,” the “bars on trestles,” and so on.

Obrist: How did this epiphany of forms come about?

Piacentino: When I was working on the “posts” and on my “trestles,” I started seeing forms around me. Countless things simply came out of what I saw in front of me.

Obrist: So chance plays an important role in your work?

Piacentino: Chance is extremely important. Look, for fifteen years I’ve had this aeroplane in front of me, on the desktop of my computer, and three years ago I thought: “I want to paint this aeroplane!” and those paintings there were born.

Obrist: So they’re found situations?

Piacentino: Situations I’ve looked for around me. As I was saying, stamps, machines and models have led  to countless works.

Obrist: Can you tell me about your stamp collection? Hans-Peter Feldmann used to collect them too.

Piacentino: I’ve been buying stamps at various auctions ever since the 1970s, or I order them from around the world. They’re thematic stamps, often old and important, like the collection from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (1851-1857). I’ve also made stamp albums with the word “Flight,” using a character of my own. Then I made the GP and Flight logo on the sheets, with a gilded silver border. The collection examines the history of flight, from Icarus to the Second World War.                           

Obrist: How do you arrange them? Chronologically? By type?

Piacentino: Not so much by type as by theme and history, starting from mythology: Icarus, Pegasus, then the first hot-air balloons and the Wright Brothers. I’ve learnt a huge amount about it: my first pictures of the Wright Brothers, in 1972, came from looking at a 1930s stamp from the Belgian Congo.          

Obrist: So it’s a sort of toolbox for your work?

Piacentino: Yes, I take inspiration from all the things I like: stamps for painting, and vintage motorbikes for the vehicles I started making in 1969.

Obrist: Absolute freedom?

Piacentino: Yes, sure, and it’s never been easy. From 1965 to 1968 I went ahead with my minimal sculptures, while all around people were saying: “Oh no, we already have the Americans for Minimalism.” Those who appreciated it included Walter de Maria, who’d seen my work in the mid-1960s in Turin, and Sol LeWitt, who was a friend of mine for a long time. When I went to America, the artists treated me with a certain consideration, but in Italy Minimal art was soon being looked down upon. In those days I found it very hard to get on with the official world of art. At a certain point I even had it in for Sperone, who behaved a bit like an old-fashioned gallery owner—those who chose which works to exhibit. He would say to me: “What projects do you have? All right. I’ll take this one, not that one” and I said: “Are you crazy? I do what I want—if you’re interested, fine, otherwise let’s forget it.” Then he said: “Hey guys, Ileana’s coming on Saturday, everyone to the gallery!” All the other artists went round, but on Saturday I went out on my motorbike. I wasn’t interested in being there.

Obrist: What can you tell me about the Deposito D’arte Presente?

Piacentino: The Deposito D’arte Presente was a sort of large warehouse, as the name suggests, in which the work of all us more “topical” artists was shown. It opened in 1968, funded by Marcello Levi and his upper-class friends. It also acted as a theatre for a time and guests included Pierpaolo Pasolini and other interesting people. Our works were shown all together. At the beginning of Arte Povera, the works weren’t big—they were small and all rather similar. Actually, it was hard to distinguish between the works of Zorio, Boetti, Pistoletto and Mario Merz. On the other hand, I had two large works measuring three and four meters: an enormous table and a violet sculpture in fake marble, which evidently irritated everyone, because they always put it at the back. So I tried to place the works better in the premises, but they’d put them at the back again. Then the third time I got fed up and said: “Go to hell, all of you!” I took the works away—I wanted no more of that. Now that I can afford to, I find it far less fun telling people where to get off, but then it was risky for my career... (at least that’s what they’ve always told me, but actually it brought me good luck).

Obrist: Bellini tells me that in 1968 you restored a vintage 1930s motorbike, and that this influenced the later development of your work. Is that right?

Piacentino: Sure, it’s just as Bellini told you. After breaking off with everyone, I took a rest and started restoring a motorbike—a stunning Indian from the 1930s. While I was restoring it, I had an epiphany, as you would say. I decided I wanted to put my life, and all my passions, into my work. Up till then, with my minimal structures, I’d had the feeling that I’d somehow done an academic work, linked to the history of art as the development and invention of new styles. So I wondered: “Why not do other things?” and that’s when the first prototypes appeared—models of vehicles, wings.

Obrist: I’d call it a detour, a deviation that arose from a situation. Just one last word on your stamps... this is one of the most incredible collections I’ve ever seen—thirty-four volumes all on flight. It’s very Aby Warburg, an authentic iconology. Has it ever been published?

Piacentino: No. I’ve actually been asked to show it a number of times, but I’ve never had the interest. In the meantime I’ve had thousands of sheets printed and I’m continuing to buy, then I’ll need to sort all the stamps I’ve bought and mount them in the albums. Now, with the Internet, it’s dead simple, for there are auctions online. I particularly like blocks of four stamps—I just adore blocks. One person who really understood and knew what stamps are was Andy Warhol; his idea of images in repeated series comes from sheets of stamps. In other words, it takes time, you need to study and understand. I’ve invested a lot in study, and in play and sport. When I have a moment of crisis, stamps are my lifesaver. A couple of years ago, for example, I had a bad accident with my bike: seven ribs broken. I couldn’t move much but I spent time with my stamps, and it was pleasant.

Obrist: So it’s a life among all these different, parallel experiences?

Piacentino: There’s my whole life in my work. It’s probably something linked to my consciousness: if all my life goes into my work, it means the time I spend playing isn’t wasted. I must admit that this approach is a bit too catholic for my tastes, but that’s the way it is.

Obrist: I see. How did this passion for motorbikes come about?

Piacentino: Quite by chance. After the experience of the Deposito D’arte Presente I said that’s enough—I was fed up with those relationships. So I went to an old man who restored American motorbikes in Corso San Maurizio in Turin and started messing about and learning at his place, and I worked on a decoration for the Indian. It was when I was doing this—I was already crazy about models—that I thought of looking at all the things I liked and starting to invent from them. What came out was a series of models, more or less 20 cm long.

Obrist: Were these the first? What year are they from?

Piacentino: They’re all from 1969.

Obrist: Have you always had a passion for motorbikes?

Piacentino: Yes, I bought my first motorbike in 1968. Also Pino Pascali was crazy about bikes, but he died in a crash caused by an absurd lack of prudence (he was riding without a helmet and made a U-turn). I had Pino Pascali as a guest in my second studio, he lived here for a month when I was doing the exhibition at Sperone’s. He was amusing but after twenty minutes he’d make you want to shoot him. I remember Pistoletto once threw a glass at him in his studio... because Pascali was always raising hell, real hell... he’d never stop, he was incredibly exuberant! Everyone was sad when he died.

Obrist: Do you remember the day when the first vehicle was invented?

Piacentino: I can show you the drawings—I’ve got all the sketchbooks. All these vehicles first started life as models of about 20 cm, with wheels from model aeroplanes, painted silver. This, on the other hand, was a wooden bar, and I shaped it like this and painted it. After that I did design drawings to make them on a large scale (the “real” dimension from me was about three meters).

Obrist: These models were something really unusual in those days. How did things go at that point with the other Arte Povera artists?

Piacentino: Not that well.

Obrist: Where did the first catalogue come out?

Piacentino: The first catalogue was the Manifesto for Sperone in Turin; the second was for the exhibition in Milan, also at Sperone’s. It was made by the Sottsass studio, and it’s great. Then the one by Giovanni Anselmo, who was brilliant as a draughtsman.

Obrist: Anselmo was also very good in his artist’s books. There’s this lovely book, Leggere, which starts with microscopic words and continues with a sort of zoom effect and the words get bigger, until in the end there’s a monochrome page.

Piacentino: He brought to bear all his experience as a professional graphic artist. Just think what a coincidence: Anselmo was a graphic artist for an industrial company, Pistoletto was an advertising artist, if I’m not mistaken, and Paolini himself studied at the Istituto Grafico, because his father was a representative in the paper industry. That work of Paolini’s, with little bits of coloured tissue paper, originally came from his father’s catalogues. It’s all these concrete things that people think debase artists, but it’s not true at all, they don’t debase anyone. If anything they give real meaning to the magic of artists. See these? They’re by Anselmo—they’re drawings of the first works. Even Sperone was a genius in graphics: he made all the invitations and catalogues himself, and he loved it; he was really good. Some of his invitations from the 1960s would still be modern today. He was brilliant—it’s just that every now and then he wanted to be an artist, he wanted to be the one who would decide what to do. But then I’ve always been a natural contrarian; not even my mother managed to tell me what I had to do when I was five. No way! But my reputation had much to do not just with my independence but with the fact that I wanted to be honest and that I demanded honesty and clarity. That’s why they used to say I had a foul character. I remember once, at an opening with 20-30 people, Toselli was acting the part of the grand gentlemen, the important gallerist of the avant-garde, and at a certain point I pulled out an unpaid cheque of his. It had bounced... That often happened in the 1970s, and actually still does.

Obrist: It’s interesting because of this “economic” independence that some artists claim with regard to the art world. Marcel Duchamp, for example, sold works by Brancusi to get by. Did you too have a parallel economy?

Piacentino: No, I’ve always lived from my work as an artist, because even though I always did the opposite of what one’s supposed to do to build up a career, there was always someone who said it was all right. Onnasch in Germany kept me going for over ten years. He was an incredible character: at the age of eighteen, he organised Armstrong’s first concert in Germany. In 1970, when he was still young, he saw the exhibition at Toselli’s in Milan, with all my first vehicles, and he said to me: “I like your works—send me some I can show.” I replied: “If you want to show them, you’ll have to buy them.” And he said: “All right, then let’s put on an exhibition. You choose the works.” So in 1970 we put on the first show, at the Galeriehaus in Lindenstrasse: I was on the ground floor, upstairs there was Georg Baselitz, and on the top floor Gilbert & George. Unfortunately, in the Arte Povera catalogues, Merz’s daughter talked about the Lindenstrasse without mentioning me—she probably didn’t even know. The establishment in those days (Celant first and foremost) had cancelled me from the map of Italian art. Actually, I believe that a good work has its own intrinsic strength and can exist even in the face of adversity.

Obrist: One thing that particularly intrigues me is the invention of the vehicles...

Piacentino: I’ve always had a passion for old cars and models. So I thought if artists can paint trees, then I can make vehicles with wheels. It’s like when Pistoletto started making mirror paintings: the first ones had a black background that reflected the image, but then in 1961 he had the idea of using a mirror. Things that appear brilliant arise out of a very simple logic. Basically, an artist is an absolutely normal person, but with a greater ability to observe and to create strange connections.

Obrist: So in a certain sense these models were like prototypes, which you then worked on?

Piacentino: Yes, sure. See here, for example, there’s this absurd idea of making a bicycle out of a rhombus...

Obrist: Did Surrealism play a part?

Piacentino: I wouldn’t say so.

Obrist: And Arnold Böcklin or Leonardo da Vinci?

Piacentino: I appreciated what Leonardo said: “Woe betide the man who develops the intellect and not the hand.” I’ve always thought an artist needs to know how to make things. When my friends said “do this and that for me,” I used to do it, like when I painted some of Paolini’s works. I liked knowing how to do things, partly because I didn’t have the money to have them done by others. I learnt to apply coatings myself but I always had my welding done for me—it required a lot of equipment. But when I had my motorbike, people sometimes asked me to help them with their welding, because I was good with my hands. Look at this: it’s marbleised paper from Paris in the 1960s, all coated with transparent varnish. They made this structural design ten years later for a record-breaking car in the United States, the Budweiser, with a triangle-type suspension. For me it’s a geometrical idea of beauty—there’s nothing really practical in it. This was pointed out to me by a hyperrealist friend of mine, with whom I used to go and see motorbike shows. He used to take photos of the engines and then painted them meticulously. My first show in New York was in 1971 at the OK Harris Gallery, where all the hyperrealists, like Ralph Goings and Richard Estes, started out. They were all there. Here in Italy, I thought “What a garbage!”, but when I was in America I thought to live in New York, where there was Action Painting—really rapid—and Pop Art, you had to be amazingly strong. You know that hyperrealist paintings started with Malcolm Morley, when a florist friend of his asked him for realistic paintings of flowers? That wasn’t the sort of painting Morley did, but he took on the job for a tidy sum (at least, that’s what I’ve read). When hyperrealism was fashionable, he was one of the best and I still love his work. He also did racing bikes. I’d love to meet him before he gets too old—and before I’m too old myself... I’m 67 and no one believes it but I still ride my motorbike. I hit 268 km/h on the autostrada last Saturday. In Switzerland or the States I’d be permanently behind bars!

Obrist: You should meet the great architect of Locarno, Luigi Snozzi... he gets into serious trouble with the police, because he drives his car at 250 km/h!

Piacentino: Why not! Here I know a stretch of autostrada where they don’t take your photo... The best thing is to take a corner at over 200 km/h!

Obrist: Is there possibly a link with Futurism?

Piacentino: No, hang on! I find Futurist paintings rather ugly, I’ve never liked them!

Obrist: Not even Umberto Boccioni?

Piacentino: Boccioni’s sculpture, sure, but I’ve always found his painting disappointing—it’s a bit too nineteenth-century. The first time I was in New York, I went specially to MoMA to see the Boccioni room but was very disappointed. It must be said, though, that we’re victims of Skira, my whole generation is a victim of Skira, for printed knowledge. In books, the colours are different, everything’s more intense.

Obrist: Right at the beginning, when you made these little models, were you already thinking of making them bigger?

Piacentino: Yes. When Marcello Levi bought all the models, I had the cash to start making the bigger versions. When he saw them, Toselli too financed me, and he said to me: “Let’s do the show!” At the time I mainly needed money to buy a new bike every two years. It was a Suzuki then, I think, but for the rest I lived on nothing.

Obrist: Yve-Alain Bois wrote a book on Piet Mondrian  and on the idea of the model in art, on the applicable and non-applicable model. It’s very interesting, because if we look at these abstract objects from 1965, they aren’t necessarily applicable models—they’re exhibition models. And after, there was already a table, so the application shifted too.

Piacentino: But these models weren't made to be used. Later on I made them in unpainted plastic laminate, so they could be used. Another important thing that happened to me, by chance, was the invention of metallised opaque varnish—25 years before coachbuilders used it, let's say. Now it's all the rage, but I was doing this in 1968. It was a pretty fortuitous invention: I ran out of colour, so I mixed up various leftovers and this metallised opaque came out, and I loved it. There were of course nitro­cellulose lacquers in those days, but they were very fragile and you could scratch them with a fingernail. Today, on the other hand, they're transparent, made for the first time for the lower fascias on Mercedes, and they're much tougher. I consider myself an expert in surface finishes and their maintenance, and I often argue with my partner about how to clean things!

Obrist: Here too we have some amazing surfaces...

Piacentino: And then just polishing metals—it's one of the toughest jobs on earth. I do all my own polishing when restoring my works, simply because nobody knows how to do it anymore with the right degree of care. Unfortunately there are some jobs nobody does these days.

Obrist: There's also a link with crafts, in a certain sense, because as Tino Sehgal says, referring to choreography: "We now need to link craft to art once again."

Piacentino: I absolutely agree. But there's also the smell of paint, which I love, and the pleasure of materials... it's just extraordinary. What's more, ever since I was a boy I've had a particular love of instruments and tools. I'm crazy about objects—I've even got cameras that I don't know how to use. On the other hand, my assistant Dario is a good photog­rapher. I've got lots of equipment that I may use just a couple of times, but that I like to have. Until just a few years ago, I used to assemble computers, and I even built them in the late 1990s. A young fellow who assembled them with me—a genius, who started out as an electrician's assistant—set up an IT company of great prominence: EDP Rent, for which I made the logo. I first came across computers in 1996. My daughter went to Brazil before graduating in architec­ture and she left me the computer she had at the time. 1 wanted to learn, and I wanted to learn fast I have an engineer friend, but engineers generally don't know anything about images, so I picked up some enormous manuals and started doing lots of tests. First of all I started thinking of creating coloured cases. There was only that revolting yellowish grey in those days: now they make them all coloured. I also painted the air-conditioning unit in a pale metallised opaque blue...

Obrist: In a certain sense, these are "corrected ready-mades." The case wasn't a work of yours?

Piacentino: No, I just coloured it. It's a decoration.

Obrist: This brings us back to the notion of applicable and non-applicable models. You yourself made these models, then they were made for galleries and exhibitions, but they aren't racing cars.

Piacentino: That's right.

Obrist: Bellini tells me you painted your motorbikes...

Piacentino: Since 1968 I've painted and modified almost all my bikes myself. Look, this is the latest racing sidecar I've painted. Now I'll show you the photos with me on it. We did this one just a few months ago: a long sidecar, with a 1000 cc engine— because sidecars are classed as long, short or classic. This is the bodywork without the passenger part. It was designed by my friend Martinel, the builder-rider who for sixteen years took part in the Tourist Trophy, the most famous and dangerous motorbike race in the world. He's 71 now and has a license in Belgium. He still races at over 200 km/h. After many years, we've started training together again. He's a sort of mechanical genius, and he's appreciated by many top names in the world of racing. He made all the mechanicals, and I did the design and painting. We're going round a corner in this photo, with Martinel driving. I also made his helmet—mine's just a normal one. You have to bear in mind that you need to slow down from 200 km/h to 100 km/h in just a few meters, so if you're not sitting right, you go flying. And you have to move fast. That's how I sprained my knee, because this sidecar requires a new movement, different from what I'm used to. This is me in my 1970s riding suit.

Obrist: How many of these applicable ones have you designed?

Piacentino: I did the decoration for this sidecar myself, in mother-of-pearl, metallised purple and copper. The Jesus Jeans company, Kappa in Italy, used to give us 60,000 lire every time they published it. It was the most beautiful, so they often published it even though it didn't win. See those helmets? I made all of those. Here we were racing in England.

Obrist: If a big book were made about your work, would you consider them as works?

Piacentino: For me, these are important things.

Obrist: So far they've never appeared in catalogues of these works...

Piacentino: No, we've only published photos of the races, but never of the works themselves. I've decorated many bikes, all different I once painted a Kawasaki 900 with a decoration that was taken up a couple of years later by the manufacturing company. I should say I was the first in Europe to colour the wheels and suspensions on a motorbike. That was in 1973. These are the things I like.