Italy, 1973
Diego Baldoin (1973, Turin) is a visual artist who lives and works in Turin. His practice investigates the dynamics of social conditioning and the fictions that govern systems of communication, exploring the limits of perception and the contradictions of image-based society, between the hyper-visibility and invisibility of bodies. Alternating photography with material experimentation, Baldoin questions what is commonly perceived as “real,” opening a reflection on the meaning (or meaninglessness) of human existence.
His solo exhibitions include Clonazioni, Galleria Bianca Maria Rizzi, Milan, and A Game, Tobox, Turin. Baldoin has participated in group exhibitions and awards including Wunderkammer, Galerie Zimmer48, Berlin; Arte Laguna Prize, Arsenale, Venice; Paratissima Talents, Castello di Novara; and Art Gemini Prize, Asia House, London.
Baldoin’s works take shape through a layered process: digitally manipulated photographs become the basis for painterly compositions on polyethylene sheets, subsequently coated with epoxy resin that crystallises the human subjects within. Their movements appear restricted, rigid, as if imprisoned. A sense of impotence that the artist intensifies by bending the resin surface in certain areas. Although they seem to attempt to break the fourth wall, the figures in his works cannot reach the viewer except through a powerless gaze, evoking the unease of a voyeuristic vision mediated by the screen.
The epoxy resin that runs throughout his practice is not a neutral technical choice. Its transparency holds light and softens contours, producing a filtered gaze, like a screen. The question his works raise does not concern representation, but complicity: what does it mean to look at an immobilised body and not question who has stopped it?