Collezione Videoinsight®

When and why did you start collecting? 

I began collecting 15 years ago. I only ever bought through galleries. I've never sold a work. My collection is private, but widely shared with the public. Collecting and enhancing art is a natural mission for me. Art saves life, beauty. The encounter with every form of Art is a unique opportunity for research, change, overcoming evolutional hurdles, growth. Art attracts, creates a fertile exchange of energies.  It satisfies, reconciles the principle of pleasure with that of reality, transfigures fantasies, activates the development of human potential.  It saves the world because it makes people think and feel, regenerates, moves consciences, elevates the spirit, makes them stronger. It contains goodness, generosity, which is already beauty. It stimulates gratitude. It is a gift, it is the most precious spiritual heritage. Collecting Art means collecting inspiration, love, passion, courage. Art is prophecy: it anticipates the future. It is visionary, it makes you imagine and dream. It is a mysterious journey, it shows new horizons, it pushes towards the frontiers of the unknown. It is research, exploration, adventure, innovation. The work of art is symbolic, it is archetypal possibility, it elevates what is precarious to the eternal. It is a form of magic, which transcends the aesthetic operation. 

The first and last work you bought? 

Every work of art in the Collection is a petal of me. All the petals make up my flower. I do not perceive them in a chronological sense. They are eternal, timeless, always contemporary. They exist in a circularity without a before and without an after.

 How many works do you have?

Very many. I've never counted them. I'll never count them. 

What is the focus of your Collection and how has it changed over time?

I welcome works that celebrate life, regenerate energy, activate awareness, promote evolution, narrate the present and prophesy the future.  I choose works of art based on poetics, aesthetics, psychodiagnostic and psychotherapeutic potential. 

Can you tell us about your foundation?

The Videoinsight® Foundation promotes the psychophysical well-being of the person and the community through contemporary art. It introduces works of art into social contexts in order to improve the quality of life, guide attitudes and talents, stimulate and rehabilitate human resources, activate insights or awareness for the purposes of evolution and growth.  The Foundation, founded as a non-profit organization in 2013, makes use of the Videoinsight® Collection, an in-progress collection of works of art with a high and experienced psychodiagnostic and psychotherapeutic impact. The Foundation exports to the world the Videoinsight® Method, conceived in 2010, first experimented in Psychotherapy (Videoinsight® Art for Care Program), then in Medicine (Acl Video Research, Video Tka, Pf Project). This Method has been approved and recognized by the International Scientific Community. The Videoinsight® Foundation has created 30 Videoinsight® Rooms in Hospitals all over the world: places where patients, hospitalized or waiting for Emergency Room, can interact with video art for the reduction of anxiety and stress, the stimulation of confidence and motivation, the raising of mood, the activation of healthy personality resources. The objectives of the Foundation are the Scientific Research for the application of the Videoinsight® Method in Medicine, in the fields of prevention, rehabilitation, support and treatment; the dissemination of the Method in Training, School, Work and Sport; the teaching of the Method at post-graduate level, in the medical and artistic fields, for the training of authorized professionals with the necessary competence for the application of the Method in social, sociomedical and cultural contexts; the promotion of Artistic events. The Foundation established the Videoinsight® Award, now in its eighth edition, tested the Method in Primary School, launched in 2016 the App 'Videoinsight® Art for Care' and in 2020, to respond to the emergency of Covid-19, a YouTube channel for the dissemination of a VideoArte Program.

... and your space in Turin?

The Videoinsight® Centre is a place of meeting, of intellectual and emotional confrontation in the hic et nunc, a think tank generating ideas and attributions of meanings to share, an experimental observatory of artistic experiences, a space for psychological interaction with the work of art aimed at activating insight, at the evolutionary awareness provoked in the personality by the vision of the artistic product. It celebrates its tenth Anniversary in 2020. Art is relational: it connects, creates bridges between people, places, ages, cultures, meanings, unconscious. Art gives, receives, returns, exchanges, integrates. In the Videoinsight® Centre the experience of interaction with contemporary artworks, chosen on the basis of their transformative potential, is shared in groups. The public on individual occasions interacts each time with a single work of art that corresponds to a specific theme of psychological interest. The work can be an artist's video, a photograph, a painting, an installation, a sculpture. Contemporary art facilitates the process of insight through which people can improve their relationship with themselves and with others.

How does art act as a therapy?

Art is a privileged intellectual and emotional experience, intimate, projective, interpretative, with a high transformative power. It is a cure for the spirit. It promotes the well-being of the body and psyche. It is a daydream. It stimulates the integration of rationality and affectivity in a harmonious, dynamic, flexible way. Opens, impacts, stays. It unites exterior and interior, apparent and intimate, conscious and unconscious, imagination and Art is a mirror that, like a Rorschach Table, reflects the most intimate part of the observer. Works of art can be effective to know the personality of the viewer, as well as the creator, because they activate projections, narratives, thoughts and emotional resonances absolutely subjective. Talking about the work of art also means revealing oneself. Some images of art can cure because they promote change in a profound way, provoke, touch and move the most hidden parts of the personality.

Which are some of the artists you follow with interest and why?

I look at the works of all the artists, daily. I'm open, curious. At this moment I privilege painting. Recently in the Archiginnasio in Bologna, I opened an art exhibition, women only, of Painting only, called Sirens. I am exploring the frontier between Figurative Art and Poetry. I will soon organize an exhibition of works of art related to this theme.

A work from your collection that comforts you? And one that makes you think?

All the arts in my collection console me, move me, warm me, nourish me. Art touches my body, my mind, my heart, my soul. It provokes me perception, emotion, desire, breath, vital impulse. It affects me, makes me resonate emotionally, causes feeling in me. Art interrogates. Every work of art makes me reflect, activates memories, attributions of meaning, narrations, imaginations.

What will be the future of art?

Art doesn't stop, it doesn't die. The human world is inclined to art, under any condition. Art is inside every person. Even in situations of crisis, emergency, unease, and decline, it represents a challenge, a vessel to face stormy waters, a light in the dark, a polar star shining with its own light, a lifeline. Is it possible to imagine an Art Apocalypse? An end of art?  Absolutely not. The light of art doesn't go out, it defeats death. Art throughout history has never died. It has always existed and always will. After every war, natural catastrophe, genocide, man has felt the need to create new Art to celebrate salvation, victory, survival, rebirth. The Art wears a pitiful white and candid veil, moves big wings, similar to those of the Phoenix, the fabulous bird of Arabia that, according to legend, dies letting itself burn, only to be reborn from its own ashes. Life passes, Art remains.

An artist you'd invite to dinner?

Maurizio Cattelan, brilliant, provocative, ironic artist, who surprises and strikes in the heart