FRAGILE CREATURES – text by Sole Castelbarco Albani

In Enrico Minguzzi’s work, forms are not constructed – they emerge. The artist does not

impose; he listens. Images surface slowly from the canvas, as if it were a living organism

capable of responding, resisting, revealing itself in its own time. It is precisely this shift –

from intention to occurrence, from plan to unpredictability – that makes his pictorial gesture

feel so radically authentic. Minguzzi describes his process as a dialogue: a conversation

with the material itself, with the image taking shape almost without his knowing, often

veering far from the original thought. “I follow what happens,” he says – and in that act of

letting things happen, a space of truth opens up, where the work ceases to represent and

instead becomes presence. His works are in a state of constant evolution, as if each form

born from the canvas were waiting – ready to transform and unfold in new dimensions.

The creatures that emerge are suspended in time – not fossilised, but caught in a perpetual

state of becoming. They are not static beings; they vibrate with a vitality born from the

tension between what is revealed and what remains hidden. Each piece is an act of

openness, a conversation with matter and with a thought that shifts shape, growing until it

unveils its full complexity. A distinctive element of Minguzzi’s practice is his gesture of

removal – of scraping away paint. This is not merely a physical act, but a symbolic one. His

works seem to trace a path through time, bringing to light what was buried beneath the

surface. Erosion, here, is not destruction – it is a form of restoration: a way of retrieving

what was lost, reconnecting the visible with the invisible. His works are never still; they

thrum with life through this ongoing dance between concealment and revelation. Removal

becomes an act of vitality, breathing new energy into the image, allowing it to grow and live

– like a mask that, even while revealing only fragments, exposes a deeper, more

mysterious soul.

Minguzzi’s creatures – new, ever-evolving species – often arise from contamination, where

nature and human intervention merge in an unsettling harmony. He is not simply a witness

to this process, but an explorer, driven by a sensitivity that reflects on the possible futures

of our world – futures where technology and nature intertwine, creating landscapes that

shift between the fantastical and the real. His work is not just observation; it’s a continuous

dialogue between what is and what could become, between the human and the non-

human, between life and death. These works do not depict dystopias; instead, they

confront us with a near-future in which hybridity becomes the key to our evolution. His

“creatures” are the outcome of a process of hybridisation, where artifice does not erase

nature, but becomes part of it – an extension, another step in an ongoing evolution.

Contamination, for Minguzzi, is an aesthetic resource that generates new forms of beauty.

The hybrid is not merely a fusion of materials, but a quest for balance between seemingly

opposing elements. It is in this fusion that the artist finds a new harmony – a fragile balance

that holds the promise of unexpected beauty. His works are not simply a commentary on

the disruption of natural cycles; they are an invitation to consider how the mingling of

disparate elements might create a new order, a new kind of life. In this play of matter and

form, his works become places where beauty arises unexpectedly – not just through what

we see, but through how it is born from the tension, dissolution, and recomposition of

forms.

Minguzzi’s sculptures, driven by the same tensions as his paintings, seem to push beyond

the canvas and claim three-dimensional space, where matter takes shape and enters into

dialogue with its surroundings. The idea that sculpture might live, grow, and transform into

a new ecosystem is among his most compelling challenges. It is a project still unfolding -one that imagines the sculptures as living beings, destined to interact with nature, to be

overtaken by vegetation, to evolve over time until they become part of a living, ever-

changing environment.

The sense of temporal suspension that runs through Minguzzi’s work is not a conceptual

device, but the natural consequence of his creative process. Each piece seems to exist in

the space between just-born and ever-evolving. There is no buried past, no defined future

– only a constant potential for becoming. His creatures do not belong to a fixed time; they

inhabit an eternal present, in which growth is endless and transformation never ceases.

They provoke a visceral reaction – one that sways between fascination and unease. The

viewer is confronted with a nature that eludes rational understanding: a nature that feels

familiar yet is suffused with a darkness that makes it alien, mysterious. This is not an

invitation to wonder, but a prompt for reflection — an invitation to discover, within these

disquieting forms, something deeply human, something that resonates within us yet cannot

be fully grasped. His works are spaces of unresolved tension – encounters with the

invisible that challenge us to rethink our relationship with nature, with otherness, with the

unknown.

In Minguzzi’s artworks, reflection on nature is not declared, but implicit. There is no

denunciation – only an openness, a multiplicity of possible readings. His work does not

take sides, but suggests, invites, leaves room for questions about our relationship with the

natural world and its evolving future. The nature he offers is neither romantic nor idyllic – it

is vibrant, unstable, in flux, and constantly surprising. His creatures are fragile, yet

powerful – destined to inhabit a world as beautiful as it is unsettling.