How to trigger creativity? A Multimedia Arts student has the key

“I am a mercenary of arts”, says Alessandro Corradini defining himself. As the link between fashion and art continues to get closer, how can a multimedia art student find a cross-disciplinary personal approach?
Spoiler: most of the prompts for his projects come from what appears to him during sleep.


26/05/2023

By Giulia Piceni. Images by Alessandro Corradini.

The school’s library is his natural environment. Legend has it that, since he has grown roots there, he would transform into a plant between shelves and desks, emitting non-stop keyboard chiming and piping. Almost everybody around the cafeteria must have spotted his soul in torment while developing renders on Blender. Experimenting between art and fashion, Alessandro Corradini has a truly unique personality.

KICKING A CONVERSATION BETWEEN FASHION AND ART

“Bologna is my city. I have a special attachment to it,” he says as a kick-off statement for the interview. Corradini studied Fashion Design at IAAD for three years when the Emilian regional capital saw him moving his first steps in the competitive fashion industry. During the courses he attended, he approached the digital world for the first time using Illustrator and Photoshop. His creativity was immediately tickled; technological experimentation was further nourished by his dedication to learning how to use Blender, a famous open-source 3D creation suite.
After downloading it, he eventually discovered the infinite possibilities the software has raging, from creating 3D clothes, garments of any kind and even artworks. The thesis titled Archivo di Moda e Digital Art was the moment when the symbiosis between the two creative fields was eventually crowned: after having access to the Archivio Mazzini in Massa Lombarda, Corradini, now a student at Istituto Marangoni Firenze, captured the essence of garments varying from Fontana Sisters to Yohji Yamamoto and encapsulated it in the form of digital artworks.  

INSPIRATION COMES WHILE SLEEPING

For Surrealists, dreams were the starting point of many of their works, and it seems like Corradini’s inspiration comes from the same immaterial place. Most of the prompts for his projects come from what appears to him at night.
Nevertheless, his main inspirations include designers known for their strong attachment to different, often opposite, artistic practices. There is Craig Green, with his avant-garde architectural allure, and Iris Van Herpen, with her technological experimentation.
But most of the inspiration is drawn from browsing Instagram several hours per day; it’s a way to stay in touch with the Blender community that has allowed him to create the vocabulary he adopts in his works, such as a good practice to keep up with the latest graphic design trends circulating on social media.

THE VIDEO PAYS TRIBUTE TO BALENCIAGA’S MUDDY SCENARIO

Inspired by the setting of Balenciaga’s SS 2023, designed by the Spanish artist Santiago Sierra, the latest digital artwork by Alessandro Corradini seems to come out of the cold wetness of war trenches. Besides an entirely black outfit whose hems are lined in psychedelic yellow, designed by Istituto Marangoni Firenze Tutor Stefano Vasile, in the short fashion film, the model is wearing two highly “baleciaguesque” elements: the translucent mask, which references the eternal admiration that Demna has for Martin Margiela, and an ugly-cool pair of shoes, a staple from the Paris-based fashion house.

“Its pointed toe is interestingly ugly, therefore beautiful”, Corradini noted. This last element was precisely the one that sparked his creativity: an artistic rapture that caught him in the library while thinking about the next project he would have liked to embark on.

AGAINST DEFINITION

Alessandro Corradini’s style doesn’t necessarily belong to a specific aesthetic; therefore, he enjoys applying his skills to diverse fields: “I am a mercenary of arts”, as he defines himself. He believes in fluid skills and their ability to shape different elements applied to various disciplines.

In this way, he perfectly condenses the workflow the creatives of the future are striving for. A future based on cross-disciplinary creativity under the aegis of technology. 

Alessandro Corradini is a Multimedia Arts Postgraduate student at Istituto Marangoni Firenze.
Giulia Piceni is an Arts Curating Undergraduate student at Istituto Marangoni Firenze.

Fields of Study
Art

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