Nicola Toffolini

Born in 1975, Nicola Toffolini is a visual artist, performer and architect. His practice originates from the intersection of these languages and, time after time, results in installations, drawings or performances. The artist uses methodologies offered by the various disciplines to test, explore and support his thought, in a process where drawing occupies a central role, becoming both a stimulus and an archive of reflections.

The works SEZIONE#A01 and SEZIONE#B01 (SECTION#A01; SECTION#B02, 2012/2017) consist of two great boards which reproduce a landscape in the most analytical way by means of a section in real scale 1:1. In an admirable performance of calligraphic minutiae and obsessive attention to detail, Toffolini tries to portray a simple lawn in its actual effective dimension, giving relevance to every single element that composes it. He imagines and portrays on paper the delicate details of individual leaves, gravel grains and roots that are usually considered only in collective entities such as a lawn and gravel – proposing that the reality is not made by great ”bunches” of the same elements, but each one has the dignity to be observed, considered, studied and admired in its own uniqueness.

Toffolini adopts this personal method of “inductive” drawing to generate reality through thought, using it also in the multiple phases of planning of his own projects. Taccuino progettuale: erosioni (Project notebook: erosions, 2012/2016) is an example of how the artist’s research is necessary to visualize and test every aspect of a work - from the visual to the conceptual dimension - and of its installation down to the smallest details. The path which goes from the idea to the installation is structured in countless moments of reflection, each of which is examined, graphically solved and documented in a notebook. His notebooks are not only secondary elements, but necessary structures in a final realization that disappears in front of the work. On the one hand, Toffolini shows them by making the evolution of the artistic thought visible and, on the other, they become the starting point for a new research. From his archives, he selects issues that exceed the original project and require more attention. These insights are always resolved through drawing and are an opportunity for the creation of sequences, such as that of Sezioni, in which the work of the artist is expressed as a series of equally important reflections and attempts.