A matter of continuity
Almost four years later, we meet in Berlin. Carlo waits for me at Hauptbahnhof, and together we head to Charlottenburg, where his studio is located. I am impressed by both the quality and the quantity of his work. This is where his visions take shape, interpretations of urban fragments drawn from cities all over the world. From this space, the analog mark becomes a digital image, then circulates again, overlapping with real cities, appearing in the pages of international magazines, and becoming works exhibited in galleries and solo shows.
The following day, Berlin reveals itself at dawn, silent and suspended. We meet in Moabit, the neighborhood where Carlo lives, a heterogeneous and open place, constantly transforming, which he speaks about with affection. In our conversation, a central theme emerges: control of the creative process. For Carlo Stanga, freedom is born precisely there, from a method that does not constrain but opens up, allowing the gesture to find its own space.
Photo: Lorenzo Morandi
Conversation: Lorenzo Morandi, Carlo Stanga
The photographs are featured in the book YourStory: Makers & Dreamers
LM
In your drawings, architecture seems to find meaning when it is crossed by life. People, gestures, small everyday frictions become part of the very structure of the image. How important is it for you to let life “disrupt” the order of space? And what happens in your work when that order is put into crisis?
CS
In fact, for me architecture is always imbued with life, because it originates precisely from people. It is designed, materially built, and therefore has always been, by its very nature, crossed by life and rich in meaning, even when it is not traversed, when it is not inhabited. Architecture is, in itself, a trace of life. So even when people do not appear in my drawings, which happens often, buildings, deserted streets, and monuments reflect the stories that shaped them and therefore vibrate with many lives. Life, to return to your question, does not disrupt order but creates the order of space, an order that is in reality more apparent and momentary than truly real or eternal. Architecture and the city are in fact subject, over the years and centuries, to a continuous flow of change, almost as if they were living beings.
LM
You come from an architectural background, where language and aesthetic criteria are often very strong and tend to push one to take a position. Has illustration helped you to question these preconceptions, shifting your gaze from the architectural object itself to the relationships that pass through it and transform it?
CS
Quite simply, illustration allows me to express myself with far greater freedom than the professional practice of architecture. Through drawing I can interpret architecture and the city without any structural or physical constraints. Of course, I impose aesthetic rules on myself, especially in the compositional choices of the image, but the degrees of freedom are infinite. I represent an environment or a square in a different way each time, following the suggestions that a particular context communicates to me. It might call for a more solemn register, or a more spontaneous and everyday one, or even a comic tone. It depends very much on how I see that place and the people who move through it; it depends on the character of the city at that particular moment. Drawing architecture and the city is like portraying a person, capturing and exploring their different emotional passages.
LM
Do you ever find value in architectures that, taken in isolation, you wouldn’t consider particularly interesting, but that become powerful the moment they enter into a relationship with the city and with people? How important is this relational dimension in the way you narrate urban space today?
CS
For me, an architecture is in fact never isolated, but always exists as an element in relation to a context and to a history. I am therefore unable to abstract a building, an architectural work, by imagining it suspended against a neutral background, in a metaphysical image. Context, and the continuous relationships with everything else in the world, are always present and are foundational to meaning. The city itself is the manifestation of a relational network of extremely high complexity, and it is precisely this that most stimulates me to embark on the adventure of drawing the city. For this reason, I have always considered the historical — and even earlier, theoretical — phenomenon of urban clearances, as they occurred in Italy during the Fascist period, to be a blunt act of violence, a very serious wound inflicted on the city. Only a sick culture can think of exalting a monument by isolating it from the urban fabric with which it constantly relates and through which it defines itself. I want instead to show exactly the opposite: no rupture or interruption, but a continuity full of energy. The line of my drawing never breaks, almost as if it were the graphic manifestation of the bonds and the continuous dialogue between architectures, squares, streets, people, and life.
carlostanga.com