Deriva
Studio
Visit - Denis Riva
In the quiet village of Follina, north west of Venice,
in a disused part of the two centuries old Lanificio
Paoletti wool mill, the artist Denis
Riva, better known as Deriva - drift
– has his studio. Deriva is native of Ganzamonio, a land of dark etymology,
comprised in the triangle Bologna, Modena
and Ferrara, he is an illustrator, a painter, a collector, an installation
designer, he experiments and is also a non-actor, who does not attend awards. He is rarely seen without his two dogs Lui and Hugo. In a series of small rooms of the former administrative
offices and in the gigantic loft spaces of the former stock rooms of the mill spreads
his studio. And, though he didn't graduate from any art school, he is pressed
by the terrible weight of the art that he carries around with him daily. He did
not take any Master degrees, but often uses the word Mazter. He is not a university professor either. Notwithstanding
the large output of works during the last year, he thinks he is just at the
start of his own research - but – he also understands he could also be at the
end of it.
Il Laboratorio
Work in
Progress – Horses in the Sky
In his works Denis Riva depicts a dream and restless nature; he uses mix media
obtained by mixing painting and collage, then he proceeds in a constant and
almost endless layering of materials. For his strictly pictorial works Deriva
prefers a fluid, see-through, almost imperceptible matter that he calls
“sourdough”, which is basically the waste-product of brush cleaning, kept and
constantly nurtured for years until it becomes a sort of pulp. His paintings
are currently on show in his one-man exhibition Memorandum, until January 31, at the Gilda Contemporary Art in
Milan which is curated by Cristina
Gilda Artese and Alessandra Redaelli
Il Laboratorio
For mix media the artist likes to hoard and
overlap old papers collected from flea markets or recovered from old archives,
paper fragments, pages from last-century magazines. His work becomes enriched
by lived stories, people from the past, while on the surface archetypal scenes
come to life, where man and nature search the sense of their coexistence.
Domenica
Mattina
“The environment in
which I live immersed in, finds its way out of the papers that I bend, ruin and
carry around,
as if they were maps of
my relocation, useful to get lost in.
The landscape that
surrounds me and that seems to always be the same, while constantly changing, is
fluid.”
Deriva
L’archivio
Cambiamenti
Improvisi
L’archivio
A corner of the archive room
Deriva
Family Banner
Works on
Paper
His works depict flocks of birds, but above all
it is noticeable for the presence of the dog, man’s best friend and first link
to Nature, but also a wolf, a pack of wolves, symbolic of a hostile nature,
like a ruler that is sometimes fickle and at other times cruel, ready to get
back at Mankind that it is unable to respect.
La Stanza delle Stampe
Engravings
and Drawings on Wood
La Stanza delle Stampe
Primordial
Printing – Lino Cuts
“Derive
builds worlds and watches them run wild in entropies, then he brings them back
and fixes everything, picks up the pieces and fragments and reassembles them
again;
it doesn't mean that the reconstruction is
always true or real,
quite the
contrary, the usual order is always changing a bit,
revealing surrealism and non-sense,
shifts that bear astonishment,
a pair of
wings for those who don't have them, or clogs and claws and Long hair, tongues
of flame, branches attached to feet and knees....
where the collages and
assemblages are a vital practice of grafting
de-contextualization which governs
everything.
A sort of careless God, or a tamer, or a
conductor who moves in the chaos... alone by now ...
A playing child who in the
meantime
relentlessly creates and destroys,
by making up worlds, making them happen and
tirelessly change.
Derive is an explorer.
He gives things a name and owns a
jumpsuit.
He raises
dead brushes and put pieces of dry color into cans.
Then he
waits. I don't know if he's blindfolded, but certainly he's Listening.”
Massimiliano
Fabbri
The Secret Room
Piacevoli
Attese
The Secret Room
“Embers
and coals are active during the day and sometimes even at night. Burn
everything, throw even the last chair left, on which you were sitting on whilst watching
your big fire.
To disappear, to become mud, to discover ticks, to be afraid of them, to be loved by nothing, to listen to molds, to touch the day, to use spring water, to open and close gates,
To disappear, to become mud, to discover ticks, to be afraid of them, to be loved by nothing, to listen to molds, to touch the day, to use spring water, to open and close gates,
to always be accompanied by dogs,
to find dead salamanders, to suddenly feel in
Japan in reeds near your home, to be continually surrounded by carcasses of
trees,
to smell the sounds of the wind,
to be reborn every day,
to think
it's the end,
to understand
that you're always in the middle.
Personal interpretations and unpredictable changes of my life will continue until my certain death”.
Personal interpretations and unpredictable changes of my life will continue until my certain death”.
Deriva
The Secret Room
Autoritratto con Faccia che Bruccia
Paper Landscapes
The Secret Room
Monoliti
Work in Progress
A collaboration with the Lanificio
Paoletti dal 1795 with leftover scraps of woolen fabric
Hugo
and Lui
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