Cristina Piciacchia

I live and work in Rome.

Altough I have learned all the traditional printmaking techniques, I favor the woodcut. Printing from wood blocks is based on a subtractive gesture and on the action of stamping a surface. Woodcut prints are a kind of primitive minimalism; they lend themselves to synthesis.

I superimpose color transparencies and outlines. The presence of the mark is reduced to a minumum. The ink carries the hue. That is why a print is more than just an engraving. My point of departure is atmospheric color and how its shades relate to the horizon. I sample some of these and play with the limits of inking. In this sense, ukiyo-e prints are an important reference for my work. I am interested in the mediated space between thinking and printing. In addition to transparencies and superimpositions, I have recently started to fold paper. This interest has led me to the artist's book as a text and an object. By this statement, I mean that I am interested in the artist's book as a text placed in relation to the space that surrounds it.

I first graduated with a degree in set design and then later earned another in graphic arts at the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome. In 2016, I began to work there as a woodcut lab technician and obtained my master's in graphic arts through a joint University of Tor Vergata/Academy of Fine Arts program. The following year, I became a member of HD Edizioni, and my work was selected by the International Artist's Book competition organized by the Torrita Foundation in Siena, at which I won first prize ex-aequo for the under-thirty category.