10 Questions with Pasquale Loiudice
Pasquale Loiudice (1987) is an Italian architect. He studied in Rome, where he earned a PhD in "Architecture, Theories, and Design" from the Department of Architecture at "Sapienza" University. His doctoral thesis, titled "Architettura Superficiale: L'immagine e l'oggetto", explores the relationship between built space and image. He currently lives and works in Milan.
Pasquale Loiudice - Portrait
ARTIST STATEMENT
Loiudice does not consider himself a painter. What fascinates him is the painted surface. For him, painting is understood as a procedure, a process in which will, the unexpected, and error come together, becoming essential tools for construction. He views the painting not as something to be finished, but as a tool for investigation and discovery. When he encounters a convincing result, he feels that he has come closer to a possible answer.
RB 0124, Acrylic and lacquer on canvas, 28x35 cm, 2025 © Pasquale Loiudice
INTERVIEW
Let's start with your background. You are an architect by training. When did you first become interested in art and painting?
My background is artistic, and my interest in art has been with me since I was very young. I don't remember a specific moment when it began, nor a particular reason: it has simply always been present in my life from a certain point onward.
I attended the Art High School in Matera, the city of the "Sassi," but my passion for art had already begun before that. As a child, I was fascinated by the works of the great Italian masters – Leonardo, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Raphael – and over time I also discovered other artists such as Velázquez, Rembrandt, Matisse, Picasso, Dalí, Klee, and Bacon. I spent hours browsing art books, observing the images, reading the stories of the artists, and trying to understand painting techniques through observation.
Over the years, I also started to take an interest in architecture. I remember, for example, my middle school graduation thesis: a small research project on the concept of "alienation," inspired by Andy Warhol's series of works, accompanied by a scale model of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Fallingwater."
During high school, I devoted a lot of time to copying and experimentation. At school, there wasn't a specific curriculum for teaching painting techniques, so I would ask my teachers for advice on materials, mediums, and colour proportions.Then, at home, I would try and retry. I still keep many of the works I created during that period.
A fundamental experience was the summer before high school, when I worked in an art gallery in Altamura, my hometown. With my first earnings, I bought my first easel and some good oil paints. At the gallery, I could observe the artworks closely, study their techniques, and gather information through magazines and monographs. My first painting was an oil copy of a small work by Ugo Attardi, a female nude from behind, exhibited right there. At home, I tried to replicate the same brushstrokes and tones. I worked on that copy for almost the entire summer. It was an experience that profoundly marked my path.
RG 0125, Acrylic and lacquer on canvas, 65x90 cm, 2025 © Pasquale Loiudice
How did your background in architecture influence your approach to painting? And how do your paintings relate to your research on architecture and image from your PhD?
In my academic path and later in my professional journey, I have always sought a meeting point between art and architecture, and I have found it primarily in drawing. I firmly believe that drawing is not just a technical tool for architects, but represents a specific language through which it is possible to shape ideas, express emotions, and reflect on space. For me, drawing is a way to explore space, to construct it with thought, to inhabit it even before it is built.
During my university studies, figures such as Cherubino Gambardella, Paolo Portoghesi, and particularly Franco Purini – my thesis advisor – played a fundamental role in my formation in Rome. In Purini's drawings, for example, architecture is not simply described: it comes to life, transforming into visual narration, into an open form capable of developing themes and generating new architectures.
My doctoral research in architecture focuses on how the image can go beyond mere visual representation. I am interested in the moment when the image manages to become a physical presence, an object with its own materiality. It is an image that does not simply show, but enters into a relationship with space, modifies it, and defines it. An image that does not decorate, but builds.
It was precisely the doctoral research that gave me the opportunity to find the time and the tools to formulate a thought I had long been pursuing. I began to observe and describe more attentively those paintings in which the image seems to possess a living, almost tangible quality. In Giotto's frescoes, for example, the figures do not simply appear painted: they seem to adhere to the wall, to have weight, to animate the surface. The architectures depicted follow the same principle: they seem to be part of the wall itself, as if the only depth were that of the plaster layer on which the fresco was created. The same happens in Rothko's painting: his colour fields, despite their essentiality, have a strong presence. The colour pulses, moves, and has thickness. These are images that can be perceived physically as well, like walls or façades.
The reflections arising from my engagement with the world of art led me to develop theoretical connections with architectural composition, with particular focus on the façade as a central element of design. These themes were at the core of my doctoral thesis, entitled "Superficial Architecture: The Image and the Object."
The work done during my doctorate has profoundly influenced my way of looking at painting, as well as architecture, allowing me to develop a language in which matter, sign, and perception are closely intertwined.
You mention being more interested in the painted surface than in painting itself. What draws you to that aspect?
What has always struck me in paintings is the material they are made of: a physicality that does not just serve as a medium, but becomes the primary expressive condition, the very foundation of the work's existence. Over time, I have learned to appreciate this aspect and to seek my own personal interpretative key.
In particular, I am drawn to works where colour does not simply describe, but seems to come to life; where the pictorial material is not just a mark, but a tangible presence on the surface. From this perspective, the surface is no longer a mere plane on which the image unfolds, but a space that physically engages the gaze, sharing the same time and level of reality. In a world dominated by digital, fast, and flat images, this kind of painting reconnects us to the physical dimension of the body.
I like to approach painting thinking of it as a physical object, a surface without narrative but capable of expressing a strong, almost tactile presence. Observing these paintings requires time and closeness: it is only from up close that details such as the texture of the canvas, the interactions between colour and support, and the small imperfections revealing the painting process emerge, holding the gaze in the present.
RG 0225, Acrylic and lacquer on canvas, 28x35 cm, 2025 © Pasquale Loiudice
RG 0325, Acrylic and lacquer on canvas, 28x35 cm, 2025 © Pasquale Loiudice
Can you describe what a typical process looks like for you when working on a piece?
In my work, the relationship with painting is physical and direct. I always try to limit the use of colours and tools, reducing the painting materials to the essentials. Generally, the canvases are placed horizontally, on the floor or on a work surface, depending on the size, laid down as surfaces to be used rather than to be observed frontally. This orientation radically alters my relationship with the work: there is no longer an "up" and "down," no imposed direction, as would happen with an easel.
I do not follow a predetermined technical procedure. I like to layer different materials, often incompatible with each other, such as spray paints and watercolours, to bring out unexpected visual relationships. During the painting process, I frequently rotate the canvas: this is not just a compositional necessity but a way to avoid fixing a definitive orientation from the start, allowing the work to define itself through the act, almost autonomously. Rotating the canvas allows me to bring out unforeseen tensions, to avoid immediately crystallising an image, and to keep the surface open, unstable, alive for me. There is no image to create nor a goal to reach: the result is always a consequence, and each gesture has value in itself, not as a means to reach something.
The time spent on each task is essential and focused. Smaller canvases are completed in just a few minutes, while larger ones may take several hours, but rarely exceed a day. I try to make everything happen in one session, more or less intense, to align the time of execution with that of the work, minimising the distance between action and result.
The way I achieve this balance can vary. Sometimes, for example, I start with a base of uniform colour, on which I introduce subtle chromatic variations while the surface is still wet, allowing the pigments to mix directly on the support, as happens in RT_0125. In other cases, I layer the same colour, but different in terms of material type, application method, drying time, or opacity, creating an internal tension between the apparent uniformity of the colour and the material complexity. In RG_0225, for example, I experiment with colour overlaps, different brushstroke speeds, and intensities.
This brevity in execution time is always preceded by a long wait: an expanded time of reflection, listening, and observation, where ideas, intuitions, suggestions, and visual desires settle. Thus, when the painting finally begins, each gesture is charged with concentration: there is no room for correction, the painting occurs in the very act in which it is performed, as a unique and unrepeatable event.
Ultimately, what I seek is a balance between control and openness, a restrained tension in which the surface becomes a resonating field, where each intervention-even the smallest–leaves a precise imprint. The finished work retains the marks of the process, but also the pauses, hesitations, accelerations, and erasures.
How do will, error, and the unexpected shape your work?
For me, shaping a painting means establishing an open dialogue with the material, alternating intention and the unexpected. Nothing moves on the surface without reason: every gesture, every intervention comes from an urgency to explore. Sometimes it's the desire to investigate a color in its deepest essence – like the blue in the canvases RB_0124 and RB_0224 – other times it's the wish to relate different materials and techniques, to observe how they react when layered, juxtaposed, or stacked, and to compose varying intensities and speeds of brushstrokes.
Overall, it is a non-linear and unplanned process; on the contrary, it deliberately leaves space for uncertainty and error, which are considered fundamental and necessary creative resources. When I paint, I try to embrace the error, to walk alongside it, so that it can transform the course of the work.
The error enters the painting not as an intruder, but as an accomplice. I welcome it, I stand beside it, and I allow it to guide the process, suggesting new directions. This approach should not be understood as automatism, but as a desire to maintain a constant dialogue with the painting, recognising the error as a conscious tool of research and creative freedom.
It is precisely in this openness – toward what is not planned, toward what happens spontaneously – that the work takes shape: it forms in the continuous balance between control and surrender, between what is sought and what is discovered. It is in this oscillatory movement that the work reveals itself.
RB 0224, Acrylic and lacquer on canvas, 65x90 cm, 2025 © Pasquale Loiudice
What does it mean for you to consider a painting "a tool for investigation and discovery"?
What I find fascinating is that, while it is being created, the painting manages to bring order to thoughts and createconnections between them. For me, it is comparable to a mindfulness session, where every brushstroke is like a breath.This means that it is not just an expressive gesture, but a true way to organise and relate ideas that, until a moment ago, were only vague or confused intuitions. It is as if painting, in the process of its creation, is able to give a visual form to something that was still trying to define itself. And often the result is something unexpected, something I hadn't planned or imagined at the beginning.
When the image that emerges feels new to me, almost foreign yet at the same time familiar, I understand that it has worked and deserves to be interrupted, completed. At that moment, it convinced me, as if it had found its own truth, providing an answer that I could not formulate before.
And it is precisely in that instant, when it seems to offer an answer, that the painting also begins to generate new questions. It is as if clarifying something brings to light everything that is still to be understood. It is an open process, onethat never truly closes: every shape found calls for another, every balance achieved suggests many more. For me, this is one of the most powerful impulses of painting: not to reach a final conclusion, but to continue generating meaning, questions, and possibilities.
Do you ever revisit a work once you feel you've reached a "convincing result"?
It often happens that a work, though it may seem finished at first, over time transforms into the starting point for a deeper revision. In some cases, it's as if the painting gradually loses the initial tension that made it alive and vibrant. After weeks or even months, I return to observe it with a more detached, almost external gaze, and what once appeared resolved now seems incomplete or unbalanced. It is at that moment that a new process begins, both mental and visual, leading me to intervene again: it's not simply about "correcting," but about reopening a dialogue with the work, as if it still has something to say to me, or I something to add.
Some aspects are revisited, others completely transformed, in an ongoing search for balance and intensity. Two works focused on exploring the colour blue are emblematic examples of this type of revision: initially conceived with a very gestural and material approach, they were later modified to strengthen the relationship between tone and compositional structure. The blue, in its ambiguous depth, required a second moment of listening to fully emerge in its complexity. It was necessary to intervene, break some lines, overlay new gestures, and restore breath and organicity to the composition.
Ultimately, I believe that every work remains open until it exhausts its dialogic potential, with the viewer and with myself.Sometimes, a new perspective, a temporal distance, is enough to reveal what was previously invisible.
RK 0125, Acrylic and lacquer on canvas, 28x35 cm, 2025 © Pasquale Loiudice
RT 0125, Acrylic and lacquer on canvas, 28x35 cm, 2025 © Pasquale Loiudice
What role does intuition play in your practice?
Intuition, for me, plays a central role in the creative process. I am constantly trying to listen to it, recognise it, and understand when it presents itself in its authentic and genuine form.
Unfortunately, I believe that not all institutions are true. Some are deceptive, the result of mental habits or fleeting enthusiasms, and learning to distinguish them is a complex task that requires attention, patience, and a certain degree of self-criticism.
In this sense, architecture is a great teacher. It is a discipline that teaches not to blindly trust the first idea, but to subject it to a continuous process of verification and refinement. In architecture, every intuition–even the one that may seem the most brilliant–must always be tested with a broader perspective. In this constant process, the initial intuition is never simply accepted or discarded, but gradually refines, redefines, and clarifies itself. Knowing how to direct it allows it to emerge. In architecture, it's as if, through the confrontation with real constraints and the specific complexity of the project, intuition finds its most authentic form. The idea builds over time, in a continuous dialogue between vision and reality, between what is wanted and what is possible, or necessary, to achieve. A movement that aims to transform the imprecise into the precise.
In my approach to painting, as in architecture, I always try to maintain this open dialogue. I never become too attached to a definitive solution, but I listen to what the project gives back to me: the questions it poses along the way, the themes that arise from mistakes and the unexpected. It is in this exchange that intention becomes clearer and more authentic. In the end, it's not about finding the "right form" immediately, but allowing it to emerge, step by step, through continuous refinement.
In what ways does your current environment in Milan affect your creative process?
I have been living in Milan for about three years, and I find it to be an extremely vibrant and pulsating city, but at the same time, it is deeply influenced by trends and the temporary. It is a place where everything changes quite rapidly, where what is central today can be outdated and forgotten tomorrow.
I believe that the awareness of this ephemeral nature is not a limitation but an advantage for those willing to embrace it without resistance. Living in such a dynamic and ever-changing context forces you to stay alert, receptive, and attentive to the smallest signals.
This instability, if accepted, can become fertile: it teaches that the most authentic and lasting things often arise from the simplicity of essential gestures. In an environment where everything tends to be temporary, you also learn that true creative strength can be found in combining what is simple in new ways, in finding balance and beauty in the most direct, essential, and even humble solutions.
It is precisely in this tension between speed and simplicity, between transience and rigour, that the city of Milan, with its image, its buildings, and its streets, can become a place where a form of deep innovation emerges: not loud, but impactful.A lesson that this city, with all its contradictions – offers to those who observe it with open eyes.
RW 0125, Acrylic and lacquer on canvas, 28x35 cm, 2025 © Pasquale Loiudice
Lastly, what kind of "answers" do you feel your work is helping you move toward? Or are you more interested in the questions?
Through painting, I seek to build a way of working – one made of listening, revision, and constant attention – that helps me understand better and get closer, day by day, to the deep essence of things.
I increasingly notice that what initially seems clear or promising, in most cases, always needs time to reveal its true meaning. It is only by going through the process, with patience and a critical spirit, that I can distinguish what is essential from what is just background noise.
It is not, in fact, about forcing ideas, but about letting them settle, testing them, and stripping away the superfluous until what truly matters emerges. In this sense, every creative journey – whether painting, writing, architecture, or simple reflection – becomes an opportunity to clarify, refine one's gaze, and get a little closer to something.
Crucial to all of this is, of course, the role of questions. It is often the right questions, more than the answers, that guide a process. I believe that knowing how to formulate them, listen to them, and leave them open for as long as necessary is a practice that requires a great deal of attention and a fair amount of courage. Questions are what help shift perspectives, disarm the certainties that hold us back, and make room for what had not yet been considered. In this sense, for me, painting is a very useful and fundamental practice to address this theme.
Understanding, for me, does not mean finding quick answers, but staying within the complexity without fearing it. It is a silent work, often made up of small shifts, reconsiderations, and corrections, but it allows access to a truer space. It is there that, slowly, each gesture begins to acquire coherence, weight, and necessity.
Artist’s Talk
Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.
