Alberto Ballocca
Alberto Ballocca‘s artistic journey is a tapestry of cultural influences and personal experiences, deeply rooted in his Italian upbringing and enriched by his travels between Turin and Amsterdam. Ballocca’s initiation into the world of art began at the age of 19, marking the start of a path that would see him transition from a regular job to fully dedicating himself to artistic research in 2018. The artist’s background is unique, as he hails from a middle-class family with an artisan father. This upbringing, though not directly related to art, provided him with mechanical and electrotechnical experiences that became spiritual thrusts, transforming technical operations into creative acts. His works are not just expressions of talent but are also reflections of a rich academic background subtly infused with artisanal influences.
Within nature, a leaf can be an idea, a forest the entire lifetime, so 'be.leaf' is the lifetime idea and Apollo the irrational logic that destroys fears. This concept of the structure of word 'beleaf' in total assonance with word 'belief' brings us to this last work that is inspired by the language evolution within the Egyptian culture. The ancient hieroglyphs are placed alongside the background of Nature, because their mechanism are the reflection of those of the natural environment and the ancient Egyptians perceived and reproduced them from the divine perception to worldly life Hieroglyps functioned similarly to that example I provided with word beleaf. Two mental objects that mix togheter aimed to generate a new one in order to speak something else.
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 30cm x 40cm
Year: 2023
Frame: Wooden Frame
Technique: Mixed Media
Orama in Greek language means 'Vision' and, as between two lovers, my vision of Nature is a mirror for the soul, for all those spiritual elements that inhabit me. This union between the statuary icon and vegetal elements become a mental object of investigation about the relation that ancient people had with and within natural environments, phenomena and architecture. It is always visionary, even how ancient wisdom, without technological maintenances, have been able to acquire such timeless and prosperous elements of expression through art and natural depiction.
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 30cm x 40cm
Year: 2023
Frame: Wooden Frame
Technique: Mixed Media
A cloud rises among the leaves and the face of Apollo Pythius appears and defeats the evil python with the use of reason, an irrational logic, and quickly vanishes into vegetation and leaves. Be a leaf. Think like Apollo. Be fast enough to avoid crashes, let this be your belief. Beleaf.
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 30cm x 40cm
Year: 2023
Frame: Wooden Frame
Technique: Mixed Media
Essentia is the latin translation, derivation, of word 'Ousia'. Aristotle identifies the first sense of being in the ousíai (or substances), that, in different realities of human experiences were considered bearers of properties. They can neither be identified with matter (as the materialists wanted) nor with universals (as Plato claimed): 'ousía' is instead the single determined thing. This artwork, performed during the artist's Aristotle's lectures with different mediums layered on a wood panel is inspired by this ancient Greek philosophical concept aimed to bring a new perspective out of it.
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 60cm x 80cm
Year: 2022
Frame: white passpartout wood frame 4 cm width
Technique: Mixed Media
This work has been created digitally. It is a mixture of different photographs taken by the artist during his walks in woods, museums visits and different materical textures manipulated to obtain a specific result, following the same creative pattern he uses with physical approaches on canvases, sculptures and installations. Bedazzled with Gemsleaves is a limited edition work included in a project to sustain the natural ecosystem as well as to share a message of ancient Egyptian inspiration in regard of the archaic people's way of perceive and connect with the natural dimension, through technological usage. Evidences that are reported from findings studies and lectures that help us to undestand how ancient people were able to survive and coordinate their lives immersed into the wild natural background. "Nature should be shared more than other speculative and damagin contents for human perception through our devices, we should direct technology on natural studies, preservation and awareness instead of for commercial purposes."
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 30cm x 40cm
Year: 2023
Frame: Frame available upon request
Technique: Mixed Media - Digital collage and illustration, Photography.
Untimed identifies the total absence of time dimension during the pure creative act. Time is a perception, strictly linked to Earth' space-time network, but within the creative act, it is all compressed and swings from a second, an instant to an entire year. The ancient architectural element in the center of 'Untimed' as been collaged to give a sense of stability that identifies the solid view of the artist during the chaotic act of creation.
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 90cm x 105cm x 3cm
Year: 2023
Frame: Black wood frame, 3 cm wide.
Technique: Mixed Media
"Greek god of fire, technology, engineering, sculpture and metallurgy. He was adored in all places in Greece where craft activities were found, but especially in Athens. Homer, in his poem Illiad, tells how Hephaestus was ugly and bad-tempered, but with such great strength in muscles of his arms and shoulders, that everything he crafted was of an incomparable perfection. Dedicated to my father who is an artisan"
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 70cm x 50cm
Year: 2022
Frame: Framed on a black/brown/white ayous frame (on request) - 4cm depth and 2cm width
Technique: Mixed Media
"An image worth of thousand stories. A painting inspired by the chapter "Cronos Dethroned" of ‘The Greek Myths’ by Robert Graves. Heavy as Time concretely acts on cement' surface. The divine of time described in a text that highlight the ancient Greek classical conception of quantitative time and that also gave energy and new traction to the artist's creative process."
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 60cm x 80cm
Year: 2022
Frame: Framed on a black/brown/white ayous frame (on request) - 4cm depth x 1cm width
Technique: Mixed Media
Awake Ananke, is the result of the awareness of my body, inner-awakening, the necessary inaccessibility and non-manipulation in presence of Natural environment, as in front of the feminine creative power. We tend to forget that words we use determine our thoughts, but words we use in this contemporary world belongs, both semantically and conceptually to a world that does not exists anymore, ancient one, so my effort is to establish a renewal of this concepts in term of preservation and renewal. Ananke is not a deity, nor a dictatorial way of seeing, nor something we can consider as usable, but a necessary background for us to observe, understand and preserve our consciousness, both individually and socially.
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 33cm x 45cm
Year: 2023
Frame: Wooden Frame
Technique: Mixed Media
In the classical version of greek mythology, Zeus, is the king of the Olympian gods, god of the sky and governor of meteorological phenomena, in particular of the thunder. Greek counterpart of Roman Jupiter. Son of Crono. Face of the subject has been assembled by the artist using an anatomical element extracted by the statue 'Cronide of Capo Artemisio'.
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 40cm x 60cm
Year: 2022
Frame: Framed on a black or brown wood frame (4cm width)
Technique: Mixed Media
‘Jinzo’ is a Japanese word meaning ‘made by humans’. The iron grid applied on the head identifies the protection of the intellect and shows different ancient architectural elements printed and applied on it. The lit left eye represents the abstractive power related to the right hand. Jinzo's palette and style remembrance is a direct link between eastern and western culture, not consciously researched. Elements that make up his body are ferrous and electronic scraps taken from the artist's father work-place who is a craftsman.
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 12cm x 32cm
Year: 2023
Technique: Sculpture
I mirrored myself within a natural spot, natural patterns, and I found what I can call my inner-self, a sense of self. Within every organ that composes my body, my physiology. Aristotles invented word physiologists to identify people that used to contemplate Nature to do politics in the ancient Athens city, and through the relation nature, body, soul, natural ecosystem has been initially called physis. ( 'fysi / physis / fysis' ) Organic body and our way of act as the first sign of soul existence. Vision of Nature brings me to the body awareness, soul and body are the same dimension, and are not disconnected as every organ allows me to breath; the natural design is awake within myself, and there is no reason to discuss it in terms of questionability or religious beliefs.
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 30cm x 40cm
Year: 2023
Frame: Wooden Frame
Technique: Mixed Media
'Kormos' is a Greek word that means 'Cortex'. Every ring on the subject head identifies one year of the artist, as, within tree's cortex one year is identifies by one ring. This sculpture has been also inspired by other different element related to the ancient Egyptian culture, that was deeply linked to the wood networks on the banks of the river Nile.
Artist: Alberto Ballocca
Dimensions: 10cm x 36cm x 14cm
Year: 2023
Technique: Sculpture,
Materials: Clay, Iron, Alluminium, Steel, Road Concrete, Acrylics, House Paint, Drawing Collages and Sprays