Giuliano Ciarloni – An emergent Italian photographer in Cluj-Napoca

“I try to use the images as a mime uses his body.”

“We already know that being an artist is something inside you, it’s a skill and you have to develop it.”

A few exhibitions, some paintings for three collective exhibitions in Valencia and several in Italy (e.g. Macerata). Always collective exhibitions. Then, last year, he started collaborating with an  art students’ association (McArt). A lot of work for a 25 year old man, Giuliano Ciarloni, an artist that recently landed in Cluj to continue with his professional formation. His hand, his eye, both tools built in Jesi (a town near Palermo and Florence) have the taste of the cradle of the fine arts. Just another emergent talent for the capital of Transylvania.

After all, why did you choose Romania?

I think that an European citizen can consider Romania a new frontier like Lithuania or Poland, also like other countries candidates to enter in the Union, it means that to accept these people like another part of us you must know who they are and what they bring in their mind, what they expect from EU, from Occidentals. For me, an Italian, Romania means also a lot of contrasts, between historical links, I found a truly genuine pride to be “Latin” here. Moreover, Romanian has been the only neo-Latin language spoken beyond the Berlin Wall.

But you also know other areas of Europe well.

I lived in Spain, in Valencia, for 3 years. I discovered Spain through an Erasmus project, then I decided to develop my career there, but I had to come back to Italy. Like Romania, Spain is also a country which I consider to be a "what if" place. Romania, Italy and Spain are three similar cultures with similar languages but having three different histories and being in different moments in their development (photos).

Why photography, why did you choose this kind of art?

At the beginning photography was only a hobby, I used to travel a lot and pictures were just a souvenir. But the more you see, the more you want to increase the beauty of your memories. Thus, your photo skills need to be trained, as Henri Cartier-Bresson said, the first ten thousand photos are the worst, so I’m still at my worse. At the same time I was already studying fine arts when I had my first contact with photography as an art, not just as a hobby.How do you want your art to look like?

Treating photography like painting is not easy and I don’t mean the visual result, but the impression that goes beyond some photography dogma, but this is not the aim. I would like my photos to suggest something to the watchers, I’d like them to be not just answers to questions, but to make them question their very questions.

Do you have any referents in the world of the images, I mean any idols?

There are o lot of people I admire. From Monet and the series of nymphets and Rouen’s cathedrals, to William Kentridge, passing by Mapplethorpe, Barbara Kruger, Henri Cartier-Bresson or Gino de Dominicis. But overall, I like mostly artists like Olafur Eliasson, Anthony Gormley, Susan Hill, Luca Vitone, Mona Hatoum and Shirin Neshat. These are artists that usually don’t use photography just for photography itself, or they don’t use it at all, but they impress me very much.

And now Cluj is your area of influence.

Cluj is a very interesting city, with a rich cultural life, and places where to find events, flow of students, crowds of minds and expectations, all these factors make Cluj an exciting city. It's a city that feels its European identity and position gives more chances to link with other cities in Europe. I’ve met some great oportunities here, like opening my own studio, or working in an atelier like Fabrica de Pensule, or the atelier that my friends built in Clujana. I wish to create also a new platform where to work with some specific tools for photography. I think anything is possible, even if it’s not easy in this period. “Quizás un día ...”

Black and white, or colored images?

Colors, definitely. Even if I also like black and white photos or monochrome ones, I generally prefer colors. Sometimes it’s a little more complicated because you can find some potential good shot but there’s just one colored detail that doesn’t fit at all and disturbs the scene, your subject loses its emphasis. Color could mean more problems, more variables you have to consider.

Do you think photography can be a way to express an idea?

This is what I try to do. The use that commercials give to photography is well-known. Art is not much different, just the message is different, and not always. I think photography, like other “art tools”, has its own characteristics. The only thing that makes me choose this medium is that I feel it to be mine, the right one to express my ideas. So if it works or not depends just on the “author”.

Canon or Nikon?

I inherited my first camera from my father, it was a Canon reflex EOS 650 from 1987, I burned so many films at my firsts photos. Then I moved to digital, but for costs and availability of products, in Europe more than Japan and US, digital has displaced “analogic” photography. Now I have a loyal EOS 50D, Canon of course, and a compact Canon Power Shot G9, for it is not always possible to carry a huge heavy camera with you.

So, you use your art as a tool to talk about life.

I try to use images like a mime uses his body, I avoid using words, telling details and little stories around them, but always at the middle of a story, where the main character is chosen randomly and briefly hands over the baton to another one.

Do you always carry your camera with you, or you try to forget your job when you're not supposed to be working.

When it’s possible, I like to carry my camera almost everywhere, but sometimes I also use the little compact one.

Are arts a good path to take with the economic crisis hitting Europe the way it does nowadays?

Even if there is a crisis, we need more creativity, and creativity needs culture, needs carburant, inputs. It is during hard times that our brain works more. Arts and green policies have to awake the consciousness of people giving the alarm (Beuys and Warhol and others).

Do you think it would be easy to survive (I mean to get enough money to live) of one's art?

Unfortunately it’s not easy, but fortunately it’s not easy. Unfortunately because, in Italy and the countries I lived in at least, surfacing between all craftsmen, artisans and artists is not a process that you reach with an exam or a degree. Differently from medicine, psychology, architecture or law, artists don’t have a certificate just because they studied Fine Arts. Otherwise (fortunately), if it were an easy thing to do, art quality would decrease its level. We already know that being an artist is something inside you, it’s a skill and you have to develop it, and then you have to learn how to be an artist in the middle of the art system, being constantly updated about what happens around.

What are your plans for the close future? Any new works?

Generally, when I work on some project, I get ideas for more new projects, my philosophy is never stop, my notebooks and sketchbooks are full of ideas and things I thought of or things I would like to do. Actually I’m putting all of me in final work of my career, a thesis about refraction of light, it will be a work not only about photography but an art installation, I’ll record it on video and photograph it. There are also some projects with others students, I’m a student president in my faculty, we have a council, and we create events in Macerata to increase the cultural life and give our student more visibility, collaborating with teachers, pubs and clubs, bookshops, shops. It takes a lot of time and requires much energy, but the final result is gratitude for what you’ve done.