First published: Autumn 2024
Tommaso Buldini’s creative output – in all its forms – is part of his ongoing, inexorable journey into his subconscious
A graphic designer by trade, Tommaso Buldini started painting a few years ago, after undergoing psychoanalysis. Initially intended as a part of his therapy process, art making allowed him to transpose his anxieties onto canvas, forcing him to extract part of himself, get rid of it and take care of it at the same time.
The Birth of the Pony, 2018, 49 x 71 in. / 125 x 180 cm
Being confronted with an artwork by Buldini can be a shocking experience. Disconnected fragments find an apparent balance in a story that, in turn, contains many other fragments: a giant, self-sufficient machine designed to exorcise the ghosts of the creator and the beholders. This is a concept close to that of medieval frescoes, which is to say, both educational and traumatising for the faithful who stood before them. Those fourteenth and fifteenth-century depictions are indeed of interest to Buldini, who – as a child – used to visit the National Art Gallery of Bologna and see Maestro dell’Avicenna, Dante’s reproduction of hell and paradise. The main element of the lower part of this work is the devil in the act of devouring a body. The infernal scene surrounding him can be seen in many of Buldini’s works.
The Good Samaritan, 2024, 16 x 19.5 in. / 40 x 50 cm
Buldini does nothing but let his subconscious speak: in front of the canvas he throws a few spots of colour, abandons rationality and allows himself to follow his stream of consciousness. He does not need to dominate the painting, but rather prefers to see inside it, a method taken from his childhood, when he used to examine the marble floor in his home to find a multitude of characters.
Buldini at “I Santi dell'Anno 2064" exhibition in Trento in March 2024
He lets himself be carried away by the arrangement of colour and produces new forms, certain he will be led to a final solution.
His art thus becomes a process, but mostly a “path” for him to investigate himself and his inner demons. In fact, demonic figures populate much of his work, alongside snakes with human heads, knives, jellyfish, monsters, soldiers, whole and broken bodies.
By GLORIA MARCHINI
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #120.
