Biography
Daniele Mazzoleni, Milanese, 1970.
He grew up in the Milan of the 80s and 90s, breathing the air of a city for which he would remain deeply nostalgic as he grew up.
A child who in his free time runs to his grandfather's tire shop, to climb on tires with his friends from the neighborhood, and who, between one football match and another in the street in Via Lombardini, passes by Mr. Luigi's shop for a michetta with ham.
Who happens, when going up to his maternal grandfather's house, in Ripa di Porta Ticinese, to meet his uncle Tony's friends, Walter Chiari, Domenico Modugno, Julio Iglesias, Mogol, or who on Christmas day pass on Gianni Morandi to him for the congratulations.
In that lively atmosphere and at the same time full of concrete humility, his innate sensitivity towards all artistic expressions grows.
Thanks to the afternoons spent with grandfather Orfelio, watching him enchanted as he painted his pink sunsets on the Navigli, he gets closer and closer to painting.
Passionate about construction, he graduated from the ITI Carlo Bazzi and attended the Faculty of Architecture in Milan until 1999.
In 1999 he inaugurated the Le Due Facce restaurant with his brother Fabio, and for a few years he dedicated himself entirely to the restaurateur business.
In 2004 he returned to his greatest love and set up a small laboratory.
For about a year he experiments with the use of different materials, focusing his research on ancestral colors and signs, on the symbols of the past that best help him interpret the present.
The first artistic production, characterized by graphic virtuosity and bright colors of the enamels, evolves in the search for an ever greater exaltation of plasticity, with the use of two-component resins.
In 2006 he created the Neroaiuto brand and dedicated himself to the production of art design, creating collections of lamps, tables and paintings in mirror-polished stainless steel, resins and aluminium.
In those years Daniele Mazzoleni followed the path of self-production, that is, he frequented art and craftsmanship in a transversal way. The project is realized in experimentation, in continuous trials, in mistakes, in renewed attempts until the final solution,
In his creations architecture, design and art meet, but the added value remains the manual work: each work is born from an artisanal process of which the author knows all the phases perfectly.
The idea, which transforms into a gesture, into a sign, is a continuous search, a continuous evolution of oneself, a continuous and obstinate search for happiness.
Even in this period he continued his purely artistic production, exploiting the techniques linked to the materials he experimented with Neroaiuto.
The first oil paintings and the subsequent ones in resin date back to those years, in which he addresses themes linked to current events: the hypocrisy of politics, respect for nature (especially human), the limitations of freedom, the need to reread facts historical and current affairs, the stubborn hunger for justice. Messages conveyed with ironic and irreverent language.
His poetics takes shape, which leads him to prefer ideas to ideologies, great thoughts to thinkers, especially if contaminated by politics and human greed.
In 2013 he moved away from the experience of producing design objects and approached the world of design, carrying out building renovations with the aim of creating original and welcoming living spaces, studied in detail and characterized, especially in the furnishings, by his creative intervention .
The last years they bring him back to the search for new forms of expression, to reflect on the themes that have always represented an urgency for him.
He creates the cycle of portraits presented in the exhibition “Tra la Perduta Gente” curated by Luca Cantore d'Amore, in which characters, personalities, words and stories intertwine to become vehicles of messages, dreams and reflections.
“I collect files,
I rearrange the drawers,
I'll order, I need it.
To die without confused thoughts
and to have clear memories.
(DM)