L&rsquo;Officiel sat down with Italian sculptor Cosma Frascina to talk about the process behind his pieces, and the cycles of life and nature that inspire his work.

D'Puglia, Cosma Frascina

It&rsquo;s about 2pm on a beaming hot day in Lecce, Puglia, when I sit down to talk to Cosma Frascina about his latest series of sculptures on display at the D&rsquo;Puglia cultural festival. What followed was a conversation on nature, decay, and the cycles of living things, which explained his singular organic style sculptures that conjure something ancient. In his newest work, Frascina has collaborated with Flags For Future to create a limited edition artist flag to be showcased in Miami during Art Basel Week. This collaboration, like his sculptures, is another iteration of his creative core, blending art and nature to spread environmental awareness.


GISELE LACOURSIERE: You originally studied industrial design, and there is a sense of functionality in many of your pieces. Can you talk about the influence of your background on your process?&nbsp;
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COSMA FRASCINA: Since childhood I have always been good with my hands and I attended an art high school. I had a passion for motorsport and have always been a lover of that certain kind of technique and design, so that led me to study industrial design. My education taught me the core principles behind a project and how to do research; but I was always impatient with school and institutions in general. School and education are crucial, but at the same time they can really be the death of art and for unconventional types of intelligences.
At some point I realized that what I had learned would not make me happy professionally speaking, I didn't want to spend my life in front of a computer. So I followed my instincts and started experimenting. I started with painting, but I wasn&rsquo;t satisfied with that, and I destroyed a lot of the work I made in that period. So I was self-taught, but with a background in design creating art felt like a natural transition.&nbsp;
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GL: How did you decide to create sculptural pieces?&nbsp;
&nbsp;
CF:&nbsp; I found sculpture and immediately felt it was a good starting point, it was a good idea. When I started I thought of myself as a designer, so naturally I started with making objects, things with purpose. Now as time has passed it's more about the in between for me. Now I want to create things without borders, without labels.

GL: Could you talk a bit about your approach to creating a piece? Your materials?
&nbsp;
CF: I select specific stones depending on form, I use irregular objects with different colorings and it's a slow process of subtraction and addition, the growth is in the process and reveals itself over time. I started by myself, alone, so I am very tied to the entire process of creating a piece. I need to control the result and the setting around the work, the context. I am obsessed with quality and finding a way to control a process that seems natural; the work I make isn&rsquo;t geometric, it's more a kind of controlled imperfection. I also use a lot of natural pigments in the colors of real stone, material waste, along with living things like moss. So the pieces can also almost be thought of as plants - something that needs tending to, just as nature does. My works I use a palette that take on the colors of nature and Mediterranean architecture. I would never want to look Pop.
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GL: A large theme in your work has to do with the give and take between man and nature - what is your connection to nature as an artist?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
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CF: I am a restless person who needs to experience a good amount of solitude, and I have always found refuge in nature, I mean really on a psychophysical level. I was born and partly raised in a part of Salento with incredible nature and at the same time some really serious environmental issues; I have a hard time expressing that sense of wonder and sadness about it all. I always saw the environment around me through two lenses in that sense, I&rsquo;m both critical and admiring. In southern Italy all you have to do to see this is look around. Problems like coastal erosion and the state of neglect of the provinces and its buildings have always been visible. It is an atavistic sense of abandonment and inferiority that is felt in the heart. In my work, especially the works made in limestone, I have imagined a world in which man is not so harmful to the earth, to his own Mother. My work aims to talk about this idea of utopia.

GL: How has your personal upbringing, the environment of your hometown, influenced your work?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
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CF: I was born and raised in a small town of 4,000 souls, a town really left to its own devices and in some ways in decline. The absence of facilities of any kind, especially cultural, makes the air heavy. This absence of stimulation that comes from being raised in a small town can be either very dangerous or an added value. I consider myself very fortunate to have had this upbringing, it first created me as a person, and then as an artist.&nbsp;
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GL: Is there something about that concept of things &ldquo;falling apart&rdquo; that inspires you?
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CF: A central theme in my work is the feeling of knowing that everything has a life cycle, the life and death of everything is natural and that things are beautiful because they end. I am drawn to the effect of death on everything and even my materials. With the environment I grew up in, I am accustomed to seeing abandoned places and fleeting beauty - that aesthetic became more interesting and culturally significant than the modern architecture from the 70s and 80s in Salento. I grew up around it, so I can make sense of it and try to translate that feeling. My &ldquo;Erroded Panorama&rdquo; series that was displayed at D&rsquo;Puglia this year, is really about exploring the relationship between nature and the impact of humans; I think humans should have a lighter impact. That's what I try to do with my work, to draw that thin line that separates nature and the human world.

cosmafrascina.com
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Cosma Frascina’s cycles of life

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