Ferretti has always had a connection with nature. As a child, when he wasn’t drawing Leonardo de Vinci’s machines (which fascinated him) or making his own toys, he spent his time outside scraping and digging to find buried remains, playing in the mud and sculpting bits of wood. Before studying sculpture at the Brussels Academie de Beaux-Arts, he started a course in electromechanical engineering. He spends his time taking apart objects and putting them back together again. Driven by his fertile imagination since he was young, Mario Ferretti has evolved in step with his tangled artistic curiosity. His machines became fragments that became rooms and then sculptural works, which were mainly inspired by trees. Using a meticulous scientific approach to deconstruct dead trees, Ferretti obtains the collection of fragments he needs. Organised, labelled and numbered, all the re-appropriated elements encourage the creation of a new combination or creative re-construction. The artist gives life back to his (arguably Frankenstein-esque) creation, drawing us into an almost surrealist universe in which creativity and veneration sit side by side.
