Fossilizzazione oggettuale (object fossilization)

During a walk to the mountains, in the late ‘60s, Giovanni Spiniello is attracted by the tale of the geologic cycles of Mount Terminio, its origins and, particularly, by fossils whose evidence gave countless information. The fossils identify the traces, the stratifications and the contents told by the work of time.
Spiniello is paving the way for his quest and he develops a new technique: fossilizzazione oggettuale (object fossilization). The etching technique, taught by M° Arnoldo Ciarocchi, in Rome, gave him the fundamental ground for the experimentation. Through the recover of the traces, of the signs of time, Spiniello proves that working on material gives the chance to new classifications and interpretations. He outsteps the aesthetic purpose, he wants to yield a cataloguing methodology of memory. Through the impression on material he wants to file knowledge, time, providing object elements for a historical and scientific memory. Flowers, laces, iron waste material, printing flongs, bike tyres, cleanser plastic labels, in a word, all that is ‘trash’, become cards of his cataloguing, artistic supports which replace those magnetic ones and represent the standing strain that is to be in order to interpret and file the time and a reconstruction of memory and of our everyday.
This fossil reminiscence gives birth to that technique defined by Prof. Enrico Crispolti, cartoggettografia multicolorata. The artist, later on, will use this technique on other kinds of material (reinforced concrete, paintings, ceramics); in this way, he will be able to reinterpret their expressive power and to create the cartoggettografia, olioggettografia, ceramicoggettografia and plastoggettografia.

Cartoggettografia

Through the press of the hand press, the objects are definitely engraved on the wet paper. The object fossilizations become traces, figurative and allusive signs of the artist’s interpretation revised through the technique and the mixture of materials.

Plastoggettografia

Sculptures and panels, made of high-tolerance reinforced concrete, where the objects are parts of the work.

Olioggettografia

In those paintings the objects are painted and, through the pressure of the hand press, they leave their signs on the painting.

Ceramicoggettografia

The objects are engraved on the clay surface.

Terraoggettografia

Spiniello’s present quest consists in making innovations in the fossilizzazione oggettuale, using in a gestalt way the old tempera and a mastery of colour gained through an anthropological quest.