(ENGLISH —ORIGINAL — VERSION)

The Body as Anchor: A Conversation with Alan Spazzali on His Work

Translation by Tiffany Amber Elías Trimble

No matter how much one might claim otherwise, art has not been democratized; on the contrary, and it shows. Art is critical in itself, it demands a series of prior knowledge, as much life experience as possible, and sufficient intelligence for its interpretation; likewise, it requires an autonomous critique, with the same demands, merely to bring everything into contrast. What has been democratized is access to expressive resources that may or may not give rise to art. Currently, the creation of artistic images —that is, images that are eloquent in themselves through their vision, that question concepts and institutions— implies a powerful prior conception, not in disparagement of form, but for the sake of an appropriate balance, of full congruence between content and its formal manifestation. That said, this certainly returns the automated technical resource to its real condition: that of mere aid.

In this context, there are those who explore the use of media that, sometimes at their strict will, sometimes suggesting alternative paths, allow them to materialize their vision, paradoxically calling into question the possibility of a clear definition of reality, as well as of one’s identity over time, with the body as the main anchor on this side of memory, projections, ideals, and daydreams. Such is the case of Alan Spazzali, with whom we spoke on this subject.

Since when and why painting as an art? Does your calling arise from any particular reason? Is there any event or situation that determines it?

Painting appears for me as a form of structural necessity, not as a vocation.

I began early, without any epiphany or founding trauma: the gesture preceded the intention. Over time, I understood that painting was the only medium capable of containing a specific tension between control and distortion, between the visible and the withheld. My work does not arise from a biographical event but from a long, almost geological accumulation of observation, silence, and estrangement. Painting became the place where this sediment could take form without explanation.

What were and are your main influences?

My influences are discontinuous and often indirect.

From painting: Francis Bacon for the violence of containment, Lucian Freud for the density of flesh, Marlene Dumas for the ambiguity of presence.

From cinema: Fassbinder, Lynch, and the early Almodóvar—each in their own way exploring the fracture between identity and performance.

From literature: Clarice Lispector, Don DeLillo, and Roberto Bolaño for their ability to inhabit the unstable zone between interiority and opacity.

But the deepest influence is the human face observed in real life: its involuntary asymmetries, its micro‑failures, its theatrical attempts at coherence.

Why bodies? Why their alterations? What relationship do you see between flesh and one’s personality, beyond the obvious?

The body is the most fragile fiction we possess.

Its alterations—subtle or extreme—reveal the distance between who we believe we are and what the world perceives. I work on that distance.

Deformation, in my practice, is not an act of violence but a method of truth: by altering the flesh, I expose the internal architecture of personality, its fractures, its attempts at self‑repair.

The body becomes a map of negotiations, failures, and resistances. It is never a stable object; it is a field of forces.

To what extent can your approach be understood as an approximation to solitude, perhaps as a means of self‑knowledge, through the human figure?

Solitude is not a theme in my work; it is the atmosphere in which the work occurs.

The figures I paint are not portraits but states of consciousness. They inhabit a suspended space where identity is questioned, stretched, or dissolved.

If there is self‑knowledge, it is indirect: by deforming the other, I observe the mechanisms through which we construct ourselves.

The solitude is structural, not sentimental.

What role does histrionics and theatricality play in your work?

Theatricality is a residue, not a goal.

I am interested in the moment when the mask fails—when the performance cracks and something involuntary emerges.

My figures often appear as if caught in an intermediate state: neither fully performing nor fully authentic.

This tension between pose and collapse is where the image breathes.

Composition, forms, and color each say their part, but how does each image come to life? How much do you plan, what happens off the canvas, and what happens on it?

The process is divided into two phases:

Before the canvas: a long period of observation, accumulation of references, and silent calibration. I work with photographic material, but never as a template—more as a field of possibilities.

On the canvas: the plan dissolves. The image emerges through a sequence of controlled deviations. I allow the figure to deform itself, to resist me, to propose unexpected directions.

Color is never decorative; it is structural. Composition is a negotiation between order and fracture.

The final image is the result of this tension, not of a predetermined design.

What artistic proposals outside of painting do you consider to be in dialogue with yours?

Cinema, for its ability to construct psychological atmospheres.

Contemporary photography, especially the work that interrogates identity through distortion or fragmentation.

Performance art, in its exploration of the body as a site of instability.

And certain strands of contemporary dance, where movement becomes a form of existential architecture.

What lies ahead in your work?

A deeper exploration of emotionless deformation—a grammar I am refining, where the body becomes a neutral surface on which internal tensions manifest without melodrama.

I am moving toward a more materic, post‑identitarian approach: less narrative, more structural; less descriptive, more tectonic.

The next cycle will push the figure to the edge of recognizability, without ever abandoning the human.