BLACK SILK NEPAL TEMPLE

Amsterdam (2006)

Nell’estate del 2006, durante la residenza allo Smart Project Space di Amsterdam, prende forma il nucleo di lavori poi raccolti sotto il titolo Black Silk. In quegli anni lo Smart Project Space era un punto di riferimento per la scena indipendente olandese: uno spazio orientato alla sperimentazione e al processo più che alla produzione di mostre. La serie si compone di disegni dalla natura concreta, costruiti attraverso pochi segni essenziali su carta. Il tratto è ridotto, concentrato, privo di enfasi narrativa, il segno come traccia primaria, come scrittura pittorica in equilibrio tra controllo e impulso. Ai disegni si affianca una serie di monocromi su tela, spesso dominati dal blu. Le superfici compatte funzionano come campi di sospensione, in contrasto con la tensione lineare dei segni. Ne emerge una relazione tra forte intensità cromatica e segni primari. Il progetto non nasce con un’intenzione espositiva definita. Il lavoro non fu realmente esposto, ma vennero realizzati alcuni scatti all’interno degli spazi messi a disposizione dalla fondazione: una ricerca non orientata a una reale esigenza espositiva, ma finalizzata alla ricerca in sé. Il materiale prodotto resta quindi come esito di un processo in divenire. I disegni furono raccolti in una busta di una nota catena di supermercati, Albert Heijn. A margine del lavoro di ricerca, in quei mesi fu inoltre scritto un racconto, successivamente distribuito gratuitamente negli spazi adiacenti alla residenza.

In June 2006, Amsterdam seemed to breathe more slowly.

The air in Vondelpark was warm and heavy with the scent of cut grass and water from the nearby ponds. Cyclists drifted along the winding paths, their bells chiming softly. Students lay on blankets with cheap supermarket wine, and children chased each other between the tall, patient trees that had watched over the city for more than a century. On a late Saturday afternoon, E. sat alone on a faded wooden bench near the rose garden. She had arrived from Barcelona three weeks earlier for an internship at a small design studio on Prinsengracht. The city still felt like a beautiful puzzle she hadn’t finished assembling. In her lap was a small sketchbook filled with canal houses, crooked windows, and bicycles drawn from memory. She preferred drawing people, but people moved too quickly in Amsterdam. Everyone seemed to be going somewhere. A sudden burst of laughter interrupted her concentration. A group of young men in orange shirts ran past, waving plastic flags. The World Cup had started the day before, and the Netherlands was playing that evening. The whole city felt suspended between anticipation and celebration.

E. looked up and noticed a boy—about her age—standing awkwardly a few meters away. He held a guitar case and seemed to be searching for a place to sit. Their eyes met briefly before he nodded and approached.

“Is this taken?” he asked in careful English.

She shook her head. “No, it’s free.”

He sat at the other end of the bench, opened the case, and took out a well-worn acoustic guitar. His name, she soon learned, was T. He was studying history at the University of Amsterdam and worked evenings at a café near Leidseplein.

“I come here to practice,” he said. “The park is kinder than an audience.”

He began to play softly. The melody was unfamiliar to E.—gentle, slightly melancholic—but it blended perfectly with the rustling leaves and distant chatter. People slowed as they passed. A small child stopped to listen, clutching a melting ice cream. Not far from them, near the open-air theater, a temporary exhibition had been set up for the summer: a series of large blue monochromes mounted on white freestanding panels. The canvases ranged from deep ultramarine to pale, almost translucent azure. In the late afternoon light, the surfaces seemed to absorb the sky itself.

E. closed her sketchbook and stood. “Come,” she said to T., nodding toward the installation. They walked slowly between the panels. Each canvas was uniform at first glance, yet as they moved closer, subtle variations emerged—brushstrokes layered upon brushstrokes, faint textures like waves frozen in pigment. “It’s just blue,” T. said quietly. “It’s not just blue,” E. replied. “It’s depth.”

One painting in particular held her still. A dense, velvety blue that felt endless. Standing before it, she felt the same sensation as when looking into the canals at dusk—surface calm, darkness beneath. T. stopped beside her. The sounds of the park—laughter, bicycle bells, distant cheers—seemed to recede. “What do you see?” he asked. “A place you could fall into,” she said. “Or disappear.” He studied the canvas again, longer this time. “Maybe it’s like music,” he said. “One note, but it changes depending on how long you listen.”

They stood there in silence until a roar erupted from somewhere near the café terrace. The Netherlands had scored. The cheer rolled across the park like a wave, colliding gently with the stillness of the blue walls.
Strangers embraced. Someone sprayed beer into the air. The monochromes remained steady and unmoving, holding their quiet intensity amid the celebration. E. and T. looked at each other and laughed without fully knowing why. The sound of celebration wrapped around them, but the blue lingered—deep, resonant, endless. As darkness settled over Vondelpark, lights flickered on along the paths, casting a faint glow over the exhibition panels. The blue shifted again, now almost indigo in the artificial light. T. packed away his guitar. E. closed her sketchbook, but not before adding a new page: a square filled entirely with blue pencil, layered again and again until the paper could take no more. At the bottom she wrote: Amsterdam, June 2006. Years later, she would remember the music first. Then the blue. Then the feeling that sometimes a city opens itself quietly, like a monochrome canvas—revealing its depth only to those who stand still long enough to see it.

It is worth saying that everything told here is the product of imagination. The characters, their meeting, the exhibition of blue monochromes, and even the precise sequence of that June evening exist only within the boundaries of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, events, or specific artworks is purely coincidental. Yet the setting itself is real, and anyone curious to trace the atmosphere described could wander through that part of the city: beginning near Overtoom, crossing into Vondelpark, passing by the rose garden in bloom, and continuing toward the canals that curve quietly through Amsterdam. Along the way, one might stop at an Albert Heijn supermarket, just as students and residents have done for years, picking up bread, fruit, or a bottle of inexpensive wine before returning to the grass. Stories may be imagined, but places hold their own truth. The paths, the trees, the water, and the shifting summer light remain, ready to be experienced without fiction—open to anyone willing to walk slowly enough to notice them.