Gianmarco Torriani is a sculptor from Ticino. He attended the Centro Scolastico per le Industrie Artistiche (CSIA) in Lugano and was taught by Nag Arnoldi, who ran the courses in decorative arts, and graduated in 1984 from the Accademia di Brera in Milan (sculpture section). He began his artistic career by setting off for the United States and gained experience with American and Swiss galleries. His work during Moon&Stars involves taking the artists’ hands and pressing them into a layer of semi-soft clay. “You have to put talc on their hands, rest them on the clay panel and press down on the fingers to make the handprint. Then the artist can sign it or write something. The first few times, I would show them the process by taking a print of my own hand, then smoothing out the clay again with a spatula before taking the real print”. The handprint itself is done in no time, but it takes about six weeks to create the bronze sculptures we see. Gianmarco makes a plaster cast of the clay handprint in his workshop and this is then used as a model for the bronze casting.
Ten totems are on display in the Rusca Gardens, located by the lake in Locarno, where various species of palm trees and varieties of camellia that are over a hundred years old thrive: Each of them consists of three revolving cubes of 50 x 50 x 50 cm, which allows to interact with the structures. Spin them around to look at all the sculptures and find out about the artists who have all left their indelible mark behind in Locarno. Almost like a game, it combines both an interactive dimension and the importance of showcasing the handprints properly. On the Walk of Fame, you can see handprints left by artists such as Elton John, Joe Cocker, Santana & Cindy Blackman Santana, Die Toten Hosen, Gianna Nannini, Roxette, Patent Ochsner, Luciano Ligabue, Pino Daniele, Bastian Baker, Hecht, Lo & Leduc, J-Az & Fedez, Amy Macdonald and many more – 81 in total. All you have to do to see them is take a stroll and with the help of the map at the beginning of the path, you can discover all the prints.
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