NUCARA Renzo

Born in Crema in 1955, Renzo Nucara has developed an artistic practice in which painting, writing, objects, and synthetic materials become tools for exploring memory and the transformations of matter. His work is also known for his role in founding the Cracking Art Group, a collective that drew attention to the use of plastic, recycling, and the relationship between industrial production and the environment. Alongside this public dimension, however, Nucara has maintained a multifaceted personal practice in which time leaves traces, materials seem to hold memories, and the surface of the work becomes a space of layering.

The diary as image

After studying at the Bergamo Art High School and attending the Brera Academy, Nucara held his first solo exhibition in Milan in 1977. In the 1980s, he developed a body of work connected to the Diary, bringing words, fragments of sentences, and notes into his paintings to allude to everyday experience. However, writing is not used as a message to be read linearly. It may be reversed, interrupted, or made only partially legible, like memories that resurface incompletely.

At this stage, the work lies between confession and privacy. A diary is traditionally a place to record what happens, but Nucara highlights the distance between an event and its account. Words become visual signs, take on their own rhythm, and suggest that memory is not an orderly archive, but a material in constant transformation. Painting does not simply illustrate the text: it takes on its fragmented nature and emotional tension.

From memory boxes to relics

As the research progressed, the relationship between word and image extended into three-dimensional space. The Memory Boxes feature a variety of materials, including wood, found objects, and transparent film. The box becomes a small environment in which seemingly ordinary elements acquire new meaning through juxtaposition. The act of preserving goes hand in hand with reinvention: an object is valued not only for what it was, but also for the associations it can evoke.

In the 1990s, the Reperti works took shape, evoking objects marked by time, almost like remnants from an imaginary archaeology. Papier-mâché, foam rubber, plastic materials, pigments, and natural components help create surfaces that look corroded or layered with deposits. The reference to a relic does not necessarily imply a real past; rather, it suggests that every material can tell a story and that the present already contains traces of its future transformation.

Cracking Art and plastic as a cultural issue

In 1993, Nucara took part in founding the Cracking Art Group, together with other artists interested in exploring the expressive possibilities of plastic. The choice of material is about more than its malleability: it prompts reflection on the industrial cycle, consumption, and environmental consequences. Large installations of colorful animals, often placed in public spaces, transform a material commonly associated with mass production into an immediate, collective means of communication.

Among the group's best-known interventions is SOS World, presented at the 2001 Venice Biennale, featuring a multitude of turtles made from recycled and gilded plastic. LThe image of the animal, accessible even to those who do not usually visit museums, makes a complex issue visible: the relationship between nature, industry, and human responsibility. LThe collective experience does not, however, erase Nucara's identity; he continues to explore material and memory independently.

Resins, Layers, and prints

In later works, such as the Resinfilm and Stratofilm series, resins, pigments, and natural or artificial elements are arranged in layers. The material's transparency and density make it possible to observe traces at different depths, almost as if the image preserved several moments at once. Time is not merely a theme: it is evoked by the very structure of the work, in which something emerges while something else remains embedded.

The variety of his output calls for particular care in cataloguing. A resin work, an assemblage, a painting, and an editioned print have different processes and characteristics; it is incorrect to describe them all generically as screenprints or multiples. For prints, technique, signature, edition size, and documentation should be verified, while materials, dimensions, and conservation conditions are important for three-dimensional works. Nucara developed a language in which material is never neutral: each surface seems to question what we remember, what we consume, and what we leave behind.