The Artist of the Absent Matter

Italian Edoardo Tresoldi is a little over 30 years old, but in his creative biography there are already dozens of completed works at both homeland and abroad, international recognition, and in the recent past, a mention in the Forbes’s list as “one of the 30 most influential artists under the age of 30 in Europe “and even the major award in Italy in the field of architecture – the Gold Medal of the Milan Triennale. Tresoldi is considered as an artist, but actually he works are at the intersection of architecture, sculpture, set design, philosophy. 

For many years, Edoardo Tresoldi has been creating large-scale installations, figures and architectural structures made of wire mesh. The prosaic industrial material in his hands turns into seemingly ephemeral constructions that viewers poetically compare to watercolor sketches, magic holograms, tangible illusions, and Tresoldi himself describes as his attempts to convey the “spirit of the place” – genius loci.

Edoardo Tresoldi was born in 1987, grew up in Milan, where at the age of nine he began studying in the studio of avant-garde artist Mario Straforini. Under the guidance of the master, he started experimenting with various artistic techniques and languages. Tresoldi describes that period of his life as follows: “I sculpted and built using papier-mâché and clay, until one day I came across a coil of wire. Of course, my first crafts were of low artistic quality, and one can hardly demand more from a teenager. But the technique fascinated me, and subsequently an academic education gave the necessary base. So I became an architect. An architect of nonexistance, as I call myself.” 

So without receiving a higher architectural education, he moved from Milan to Rome, where he began working in various creative fields, as film, television, set design, sculpture. He says: “I went from an artist to a props specialist, and then became a set designer; each stage of my life so far has had its own professional goal.” The scenery over which Tresoldi worked was often made from a metal grid and the young man was once again fascinated by this material: its narrative potential and the ability to literally draw in the air with its help. 

 Text: Elizaveta Klepanova
Illustrative materials provided by Edoardo Tresoldi

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