Your story in a few lines, by not forgetting from where it started – birth, family and studies
I was born in Padua, Italy, on May 28, 1980 and I was always attracted by any manual activity since I was a little kid. I grew up in the countryside, first of 3 sons of a middle class family, mum was used to say I was spending hours taking things apart and rebuilding them. I knew I wanted to be an artist but I was also attracted by industrial design and architecture in high school, at that time I was a bit of a ‘rough guy’ and I didn’t have enough money to go to the university so I was looking for a job that gave me the knowledge and to pay the bills. I, so, attended different free courses of makeup and video shooting. Basically, by looking back, what I do today is just a natural consequence of what I always wanted to do.
You have a story of both creative (sculptor and visual artist) and awarded make up artist in the movie industry, recently also in Italy where you got the most important Italian film award in your category (the David Donatello for best make up artist in the movie Tale of the Tales, directed by Matteo Garrone).
We are deeply astonished by your combination of hyper-realism and of baroque and by the use of an ‘alter ego’ for your artistic carrier.
It’s a unique mixture: you make future happening in the portraiture, the evolution of the ‘self’ investigated here and now.
How did you make this philosophy yours? How did you get this inspiration?
We are three brothers…I’m the first one and my father called me Adamo as a second name, my sister got Eva and my brother got Abramo, but all the three of us are not ‘believers’, it’s a funny story and I love it.
I started producing art since I was a teenager but I got into the cinema industry because I wanted to learn and to improve the techniques and, possibly, to get a living while I was doing that. I was so lucky to meet – and to learn from – some great artists.
I’m not a fan of superheroes or of horror movies, I don’t watch TV series I don’t even have a TV since I was 21, I was always more interested in the artistry, in the process, in the materials and in the people behind those creations.
Every art piece I made came from a particular state of mind or from a difficult situation that triggered the need to reflect on something.
I was coming from a big personal loss that really tear me in pieces and that forced me to re-consider myself, my ideas and all the concepts I had. That was the time where I started to reflect on the concept of Time: it eventually became the fil rouge behind my art pieces. Or the concepts like ‘we will never meet at that age’ where I started to think about the possibility of my parents’ death and how sad I’d be feeling and all the emotions connected to that – let’s say, the physical impossibility to see each other in 50 years time from now.
Who are or have been your masters? What about the plastic reality of Ron Mueck and of Patrizia Piccinini? Or, are you maybe more inspired by costume designers and other creative minds?
I had the pleasure and fortune to work and to learn from many talented artists, a few of them gave me big life lessons like Kazuhiro Tsuji, but I never met Mueck and Patricia.
I was always impressed from the ancient masters, from sculptors like Gian Lorenzo Bernini or from the fascinating Turners’ landscapes.
If London is your city, what do you feel to give her and what about her gifts to you? Which is the secret hideaway when you’re there and like to have a moment to source new energy for your creations?
I love London: I found meritocracy, I give back loyalty. My secret hideaway? Richmond Park.
What is the book and the music with you now?
Lords of the Left-Hand Path: A History of Spiritual Dissent by Stephen Flowers.
Music: Enigma
What is your favourite food and your favourite drinks?
What a question… Pizza obviously! Orange juice, alcoholic drinks are not for me.
A talent you have, the one you miss
I have a creative mind and I like to do too many things together…
Which is your secret to slow down, if you like to do so, in the life you have actually chosen?
I can’t really slow down, it makes me sick and bored, I like the pressure, it keeps me alive, being alive for me means being creative. I do meditation whenever I can, I should definitively do it more.
What did you learn so far in your life?
So many things … The fact is that I keep forgetting them, that’s the big deal. That’s the only work there is to do, remembering what we already know, who we really are.
This physical reality is just a reality, after we die we just change reality.
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As visual artist, the make up artist Valter Adam Casotto will open a double solo show – (V)Alter Ego – of his last pieces at Andrea Tardini Gallery (Venice): on April 7, 2017 at Giudecca 282 and on April 8 at Salizada San Samuele (both the shows will end on June 6, 2017).