With such a vast presence of black in your work it’s inevitable to think about Malevich’s square. In an era of overcrowding of images, is the black-out abstraction the true element of disruption?

Disruption is not noise, not shock, not provocation. It is silence. The refusal to add another image. A black canvas does not cry out. It stands. It endures. It absorbs. And in doing so, it resists the very economy of attention that governs the spectacle of our time. But whether it is disruptive today, I’m not quite sure–it may also be a retreat, or, like I already said, a kind of refusal. In a world that constantly asks for more, painting less might be its own kind of gesture. But whether it disturbs or simply withdraws -I leave that to others.

In Little Nada (1652–2023), you painted over a historical artwork. What led you to intervene on that specific painting? Was it the artwork itself that compelled you, or an inner voice?

When I painted over this Christ on the Cross, my sole intention then was to symbolically destroy an image based on a terrible lie.

In the Fondazione Prada there is another painted-over canvas: in Grey Nada (…–2023), the image of the underlying crucifixion is partly visible, as though it were a shadow within the darkness you’ve layered on top. Would you say your painting is more about concealment or revelation?

Both, because by concealing this specific image, I reveal something else. Although, the Crucified one remains, yes, but only as residue–as a memory. What interests me is not the dialectic of hiding and showing. It is the ambiguous space where images begin to lose their names. Where they are no longer functional, but residual. This specific work is not only about Christ as a mistake. It’s about the slow, visible disintegration of what once meant something.