English edition · Originally published by Matteo Zanetti in Tamago-Zine on 2 November 2026.
My girlfriend and I are visiting ArtePadova, the modern and contemporary art fair.
We walk through the stands, look at dozens of works, stop in front of some and move on. We have been going to fairs and exhibitions for some time, and we know that, among the many works we see, only a few continue to stay with us after the visit.
Then we enter the Contemporary Art Talent Show, the space dedicated to emerging artists. And there we really stop.
In front of us is a large painting, dominated by red, with a mark in the centre. No landscape, no figure, no recognisable subject. Only that red and a form that seems to have produced itself with its own energy.
I do not remember the exact words we exchanged. I do remember the feeling: that work had struck both of us, at the same moment. We liked it without yet knowing how to explain why.
We later discovered that the author was Julian T., the artistic name of Julian Tiscione, originator of the IMPACT project. That mark had not been painted with a brush. It was the trace of an impact: the result of a physical action, designed by the artist and, in its final form, also entrusted to the forces of matter.
We did not buy the painting. But we said something that, over the years, would become almost a refrain: sooner or later we will buy one. And, sooner or later, we will buy exactly that red.
To understand why that painting had stopped us, it is worth going back to 2007, before our encounter. It is the year of the 52nd Venice Biennale, to which one of the most emblematic actions of Julian T.’s research is linked: a performance with a dirigible and the fall of colour.
The idea of IMPACT does not consist in painting an image and then making it appear spontaneous. It consists in preparing the conditions so that an image is born from a collision. The artist chooses the materials, the surface, the conditions of the action. But he does not draw every contour of the mark that will result.
Gravity, speed, the density of the colour, the resistance of the surface: all these variables participate in the birth of the work. The result is not exactly replicable.
IMPACT is the gesture; what remains on the surface is its material testimony.
In the 2007 performance the gesture is taken high, until the fall is transformed into an event. Painting is no longer only something observed after the fact: it becomes an occurrence, with a preparation, a waiting, a trajectory and a concluding moment.
It is a substantial difference. Julian T. does not try to imitate chance: he introduces it concretely into the process.
He does not renounce his own artistic intention; he decides where that intention must stop, allowing the rest to happen.
When we found ourselves in front of the red painting, in 2019, we did not yet know all this history. Knowledge came after the emotion. And this is perhaps the most sincere way one can meet a work.
After Padova, Julian T. did not remain the name read next to a painting. Over time we got to know him personally, met him on other occasions, went to see his exhibitions. And every new encounter added something to that first look.
Knowing the artist does not necessarily mean finding a work more beautiful. It does mean understanding its path: discovering that behind an apparently simple form there are choices, experiments, questions and attempts.
In his work what has always interested me is precisely the relationship between control and unpredictability. IMPACT is not an accident left to chance. It is an event that the artist decides to provoke, while accepting that he cannot establish in advance every detail of the result.
Over time, among the works we look at and those we choose to keep with us, I have learned that it is not always the most planned encounter that leaves a mark. And in the meantime the promise continued. When we saw him again, we often returned to the subject: one day we would buy one of his works. We meant it. And yet we postponed. Not because interest had diminished, but because sometimes a desire remains suspended between conviction and the moment one decides to realise it.
The painting purchased is not the one that had made us fall in love with Julian T.’s work.
That large red IMPACT from Padova is no longer available.
But it continues to be, in a certain sense, the most important of this story. It is the one that stopped us, that pushed us to know the artist, that gave rise to everything else.
When a work enters a collection, it is easy to talk of quotations, provenance and market. These are legitimate questions, but for me they never exhaust the relationship with art.
A work can accompany us for years without being hung on a wall of the house. It can remain in memory, modify the way we look, become the starting point of a relationship with the person who made it.
For seven years that red painting did exactly this. Today we have kept the promise to buy an IMPACT. Another remains, however, the original one, born in front of a large red surface with a mark in the centre.
That red painting, sooner or later, we will buy.
Complete English translation of the Italian original, preserving its structure and qualifications.
