_ GARUDA
A VERTICAL RESEARCH
The work of Garuda, the pseudonym of Franco Bianchi, is born from an act of rupture: the refusal of the perfect image. In a present saturated with clean, stabilized, hyper-defined surfaces, aerial photography risks becoming visual consumption, an aesthetic of control, a spectacle of distance. Garuda intervenes precisely against this drift. He does not use flight to produce reassuring images, but to bring a condition of instability into the work itself. In his works, the view from above never coincides with domination. There is no optical triumph, no pacified contemplation. There is exposure. There is risk. There is the body, even before the image. Flight is not sublimated into a symbol: it remains a physical, vulnerable fact, crossed by a real tension.
I WANTED
TO CAPTURE
A
VISION
AND BRING_
IT BACK
TO THE GROUND
Garuda’s research develops around the themes of vision and fracture, understood not as sudden events but as the outcome of a long process. A path made of passages, attempts, deviations and pauses, in which even what seems “suspended” or marginal becomes preparation and stratification of the gaze.
WHAT HE WORKS ON
THE ARTIST
THE CONCEPTS
OF HIS
ART
01
_ VISION
Verticality is the starting point of the gaze. Looking from above means removing the usual perspective and bringing everything onto the same plane. Roads, fields, water and architecture become signs. The territory ceases to be a landscape and reveals itself as structure.
02
_ VERTICALITY
Verticality is the starting point of the gaze. Looking from above means removing the usual perspective and bringing everything onto the same plane. Roads, fields, water and architecture become signs. The territory ceases to be a landscape and reveals itself as structure.
03
_ STRATIFICATION
Every image is born from an overlap of layers: landscape, matter, gesture. The photographs are reinterpreted through manual interventions that add depth and rhythm. The result is a stratified surface, where the image is built over time.
04
_ RUPTURE
Rupture is the moment when the image stops being a document and becomes a work. Tearing, cutting, recomposing means interrupting the continuity of the gaze and creating a new visual narrative. It is a physical gesture that opens space for transformation.
THE JOURNEY
Garuda’s work is born from a progressive research into the gaze. From painting to portraiture, up to aerial photography, each phase represents a passage toward a new understanding of the image. The journey does not follow a technical line, but a transformation of the point of view: observing, detaching, reorganizing the landscape into a new form.
PAINTING
_2002
Garuda’s journey begins with painting. His early work is tied to matter, gesture, and the construction of the image on the surface. In these years, a visual sensitivity takes shape, attentive to textures, stratifications, and the relationship between sign and space.
PORTAITURE
_2010
Portraiture introduces a new dimension of the gaze.Attention shifts from the surface to the face, from matter to presence. Through drawing and photography, Garuda explores identity and the relationship between observer and subject.
FLIGHT
_2011
With flight, the point of view changes radically. The landscape is observed from above, freed from its usual perspective. Fields, cities and the lines of the territory are transformed into graphic signs, opening a new visual research.
THE FIRST VERTICAL SHOT
_2012
The first vertical shot marks a turning point in the language. The horizon disappears and the landscape flattens into an abstract composition. The territory is no longer represented as a panorama, but as a structure made of forms, rhythms and geometries.
GARUDA
_2025
Garuda is born as the synthesis of this journey. Painting, aerial photography and manual intervention meet in a single process. The image is observed, transformed and recomposed, giving rise to works that bring together gaze, matter and gesture.