Black & White
Every artistic creation has an origin, a trigger that has been born within or outside the artist, in the atmosphere around him, in the material he works with or in other and multiple situations and possibilities. Such initial inspiration, being the first step that leads the further process of shaping and depuration which gives place to the final piece, represents an unattainable process, which is hard to control.

Consequently, a rigorous working discipline, a permanent search and an incessant and tireless experimentation are required. Undoubtedly, when the artist finds his own trend, a path of work to maximise a style –with the connotations that this term implies-, identifiable as his own, is when the personality of both the work of art and of the artist himself is being forged, and it is also when the rough seam from where he takes the precious substance for his work is discovered.

Such is the case of Diego Masi (1965), who creates a work departing from the game of the shapes –usually three-dimensional-, the surfaces of which are dressed up and defined in black and white drawings. This superficial mosaic, these two basic colours are the key of his works: they cut the shape of the background; they define the surface and therefore, the volume. They explain the shape when it reaches an entangling and baroque development and they also ensure the perception of the object when the relation of the scale with the background is deliberately disproportionate, a recurrent resource used by Masi. By doing so, the artist is released from the configuration of the object and moves naturally from a figurative image (such as his cows) to free shapes, with a larger or minor geometric attachment. Thus, intriguing objects are created, the first reading of which is clearly plastic as it is imposed as such by the vigour of the image, but they also invite to construct free and formal associations that institute visual relationships, belongings –so to say- with some particular families which have animal or vegetal characteristics.