Interview with artist of Past Lovers Cover Art, Alberto Di Pietro
I recently released a new EP entitled Past Lovers and I was fortunate enough to work with an amazing team of individuals to create this project. I wanted to honor them by picking their genius brains a bit and letting you into their world as well. Here is the first of the interviews with, one of my favorite visual artists, Alberto Di Pietro, creator of the cover art for Past Lovers, where we discuss what defines an artist, finding your voice, and the power emotions can play on love and creative expression.
I've been a fan of your art and aesthetic for while now. You've got such an individual style & one of the most amazing Instagrams. Who are some of your inspirations as a visual artist? First off, thank you so much for all the compliments! Well i get inspired by a lot of things, really. Not only by other people. I'm very inspired by nature. Humans could never create things that nature creates. We can't compete with nature when it comes to "visuals" and beauty, if you think about it. But of course, i'm very inspired by many artists and creatives. Frida Kahlo is one of them, for example. Pablo Picasso, Gustav Klimt and a lot of other known artists. I get my inspiration also from less known creatives/artists, that sometimes have or had a lot of interesting views and concepts. I love Jesse Kanda and Leigh Bowery, just to mention a few. Very different people, but geniuses in my opinion. Another thing that inspires me is definitely fashion. Alexander McQueen, Thierry Mugler, Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan are on the top of my list with many others. I have too many things I get my inspiration from and I actually think I could never give a precise answer to such a question. Growing up, how did you find your voice as a creative person and once you found that voice, did your confidence in your gift come easy or was it something you grew to understand? I think i'm still searching for my voice as a creative person. Don't know if I'll ever find it, honestly. I was always the kid that stayed home and just drew whatever came across his mind and I also went to art school, actually. And as far as I can remember, I preferred to have a coloring book and pencils instead of other toys. Now that I’ve grown up, my creativity, taste and inspirations change quite often and I learned that about myself, not so long ago. I think I'll evolve a lot of times still, because I feel like I'm always looking for new things, techniques, art forms etc... And also because I'm very contradictory and impulsive when it comes to my works, processes and so on. Most of the things I've done were "born" out of mistakes. Especially lately. I'm growing to like mistakes during a creative process. So, yes, i'm still growing to understand my voice as a creative person, definitely. What do you want to represent as an artist? Is there a particular statement you'd like to convey to viewers of your art? I wouldn't call myself an artist or call my works art. Not for now, anyways. I think that's still something I have to work on and prove to myself and others. A creative person, that's what I sure am.
What I'd like to represent as an "artist" (if I'll ever become one) would be for the viewers to not necessary feel a connection with my work, which would obviously be great, but at least being moved or attracted to it for a mysterious reason to leave them wondering. I'd like to be provocative in a certain way, so that people would think about my "art" even after they've seen it. For good or bad reasons. It might sound pretentious and I sure have to do a lot of work to get this kind of reactions. So, I don't know if there's one word to describe all of this, but that's what i'd like to represent. Mystery, maybe?
In regards to the artwork for Past Lovers, what was your thought process as well creative process for the album artwork?
When Vincent told me about the EP and what the mood of it was, I started to think about different materials. I don't know why. I just felt like I needed to do something tangible, "organic" if you will. But love, and all the emotions that come with it, are not something that you can actually touch, it's almost abstract. And here's when my contradictions kick in again. One of the materials that fascinates me is paper. Maybe because I've always had to have paper around when I wanted to draw. Paper can be very fragile. It can be cut, scrunched up, ripped apart, transparent, thick, textured, smooth, black, white, colorful... just like the emotions that some people might feel when they're in love, wether it's a healthy relationship or not. Some people will scrunch you up, some will try to make you all nice and smooth again. Some will make you feel so comfortable that you can be completely transparent with them. But the more layers of paper you put one on top of the other, the harder it is to do certain things. And that's what emotions do: they hang on you and layer up. Especially if you're in love, in a vulnerable position and unable to shake this emotions off of you. So I started to cut, scrunch up and rip different types of paper and arranged them as I thought would look the best. But it wasn't abstract enough. You could still clearly see where a piece of paper begun and where it finished. And that's not what I wanted. Then I thought about a technique/art form that could give me a much more abstract effect: scanography. I already knew scanography, but I never really saw the use of it. I started to think about a way to get the result I wanted. I tested and "studied" different methods for a few days and so I finally got the result I wanted by positioning the paper and moving it around as the scanner was going. And there was the cover for Past Lovers. The Black frame around the scanography is just a photography of black paper, perfectly cut around all the madness going on in the center. - What is your favorite song on the Past Lovers EP? Uhh, this is a hard one! I think it would have to be a toss between "Ride Out" and "Just One/Fall Through". But honestly I listen to the whole EP on repeat anyways. - Lastly, if you had to curate an art exhibition with any artist (dead or alive), who would you choose and why? I really thought about this one too long. I'd have to go with Frida Kahlo. Just because she was, and still is, the first artist that I felt really close to. I've learned so much about myself just by reading about her, her thoughts, her views and her art. And I think, even if my works would be completely different than hers, she'd probably get where they come from and why I did what I did. I like to think that we could have a great connection.
Follow Alberto on:
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/imbe__/
And you can see and hear my new ep ‘Past Lovers’ at www.vincentis.com/music
Instagram| https://www.instagram.com/vinniethebooh/
Twitter | https://twitter.com/VinnieTheBooh