Film and the Portal: The Experimental Animation of Leonardo Carrano

In the context of international artistic animation, Leonardo Carrano's work represents an emblematic case study for reflecting on the contemporary practices of abstract animation and the convergence between artisanal and computerized techniques. Starting from his training as an abstract painter, Carrano interprets the nature of representation – in its different forms and languages – linking it to the native form of engraving: an opaque body, simultaneously both hard and malleable, inviolable and metamorphous, mute and synaesthetic. The artist ‘sculpts’ different forms and artistic supports (from acids to silicon blocks, from canvas to film, to electronic and digital pixels, up to the current VR experiments), tracing the archetypal foundation of the image in the imprint. The cinematographic frame and the frame of the digital image are, in fact, the kinetic correlative of the painting canvas and the engraving plate. Film becomes a sort of alchemical portal for Carrano: an animistic space where any figurative and aesthetic form appears and is revealed according to a configuration in which his work method surprisingly resembles that of an artisan and alchemist.