Vincenzo Cabiati on Ceramics, Cinema, and the Art of Reframing

Vincenzo Cabiati, born in Liguria in 1954 and trained in the studio of his father Achille Cabiati, a Realist artist, moved to Milan in the late 1980s. There he held his solo show 'Femminea' at Galleria Giò Marconi and joined the self-managed artist group of Via Lazzaro Palazzi. Cabiati's work draws from a heterogeneous repertoire including art (Chardin, Courbet, Lorrain, Man Ray), cinema (Kubrick, Greenaway, Truffaut), and architecture (Ledoux), employing painting, watercolor, drawing, sculpture, photography, installation, and video. He describes his practice as a non-ironic, non-citational 'reframing' of images, where the material—often ceramics—is chosen for its luminous, screen-like quality. His early piece 'Giubbe rosse che si baciano' combines Barry Lyndon, Blek Macigno, and clay. Cabiati's ceramics, developed with Davide Servadei at Bottega Gatti, feature large formats, bright enamels, gold and platinum lustres, and transparent third-fire colors. His work is characterized by a hybridization of drawing and ceramics, as seen in his first Giò Marconi show where he drew on white clay cylinders emerging from the wall. Cabiati's tangential relationship to the 1990s generation is noted; he was classified as a 'lone wolf' in a Politi book on Italian art. The interview is part of a series on artists and ceramics by Irene Biolchini, who teaches Contemporary Art at the University of Malta and is Guest Curator for the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza.