INTERVIEW ENGLISH

Porto Orso - Let´s talk about your relationship with figurative arts. Who are the artists you feel closer and those who have been more influencing your works?

GianOrso - Well… drawing has been my biggest passion since I was a child I used to spend most of my days drawing at my table.

When I was 10 y. o. I knew I wanted to attend an art school, then getting a Ph. D. in
architecture and design and finally a job in advertising and graphic design.

Then for different and various reasons my life has gone in a completely different direction
from the one I had in mind.

So I have continued to draw on my own, copying the artworks of Michelangelo and Bernini. At 16 I´ve bought a beautiful edition of Oscar Wilde´s “Salomè”, illustrated by Aubrey Bearsdley and I´ve been completely caught by the beauty of black ink.

Always at 16 I´ve started to buy my first pornographic magazines and thanks to them I´ve
discovered the art of Tom of Finland.

During all these years I´ve bought many art books, photographic books and…. many
pornographic magazines that have made me discover different artists like Rex, Domino,
Etienne, Bastille and then the masters of photography like Robert Mapplethorpe, Herb Ritts, Horst, Bruce Weber, Mark Chester and many others that have influenced my graphic and photographic sense of art.

P - Why the passage from drawing to photography? Is there a particular reason for this change?

G - Drawing is a beautiful, difficult discipline that demands time, patience and dedication, which with my daily job I have always, less at disposition.

1996 has been the last year in which I have spent all the evenings of 8 months to my artworks.

After years of black ink I had rediscovered the beauty and the softness of pencils and black coal.I can´t say how many hours I have spent at my home table, drawing hair and beards and shadows.

Another thing I remember of those days was my fascination for tattoos and piercing and being so busy studying the symbolism.

At the end of that collection I felt empty because I had put everything, too much of myself in them.

For months I have been unable to take a pencil and start to sketch anything.
More or less at the same time I had started to take photos of my friends for pure pleasure.

Since the results were more than satisfying I decided to go on this way. As for the artworks, even for photography I have started using only my instinct.

Then I have decided to attend a professional course with an well-experienced fashion
photographer, who has taught me to “watch inside” the art of photography and the discipline of creativity.

Then … I shoot, shoot, shoot photos.

P - Your artworks are usually monochromatic.

G - They usually portrait a very dark sensuality.

P - And even in your photos there´s a heavy presence of black and dark backgrounds. Are your photos an ideal following of your old artworks?

G - Yes, you are right.

Photography is the natural following of my personal research in the creation of images that represent an ideal mixture of serious art, eroticism, graphism and pornography. I like my subjects fully surrounded by black backgrounds.

I like the color black because is the color of the night, the color of the leather world, which I feel very close for personal and sexual choices, is the key element in Robert Mapplethorpe´s photos (he is one of my personal heroes and if I am a photographer it´s even his fault!).

P - Drawing gives to the artist the opportunity to create ideal shapes leaving the fantasy free. A fantasy which is more limited in photography. Do you ever have the temptation to make a new sketch with a pencil?

G - The men featured in my artworks are my erotic ghosts, the men I would have loved to meet, and my ideal types. But even the men I took photos of, have been transformed in my erotic ghosts just adding some stuff like a jockstrap, a leather jacket, a bear hat, a black tanktop, heavy shoes and making them pose in a particular way in front of my camera. During my photographic sessions my first shoots are, usually, purely technical, because I need to relax my subjects, to put the last touches in the lighting and to study the poses I have already in my mind.

Then it´s during the shooting that inevitably arrives the moment when a special sparkling starts between my model and me, a complicity that by pass the unconfortableness of posing naked and that is the real base of my best images. Images I have studied, cut and watched with different eyes, just to realize they talk for me and about me, of my ideas, of my passions, of my admiration and love for those faces, those happy or sad eyes, for those bodies so full of animal sensuality, for those nervous, beautiful hands, more than any written book.

Images that have been so emotionally catching that have made me decide not to get back to drawing anymore.

P - What was the ideal of bears you wanted to put in evidence with your artworks? And today with your photos?

G - Well… Beauty is where you find it. For me it´s in big, round men.

Doesn´t matter if heavy hairy or smooth.

But they must a face, a look in the eyes, a physical presence (completely far from the actual standard of male beauty, too cured and perfect) that hit my imagination and that is the essence of my photographic issue.

My mission is to take photos of those faces and bodies. It´s not a chosen reason: it´s in my DNA.

P - Are you sure we won´t see any new artwork signed gianOrso?

G - Yes. I can confirm it without hesitation. Photography has absorbed completely my interests.

GIANORSO EMAIL : bear4sexrm@hotmail.com

Interview by Porto Orso
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