Rising Stars: Meet Livio Stabile of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Livio Stabile

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My current practice involves art, architecture and construction —not necessarily in that order. In my research I let the three realms cross-pollinate.

There wasn’t a specific moment marking the decision to start making art. I gradually rolled into it with an ever-increasing sense of urgency. My first drawings on paper, dating back to 2001 while studying architecture in Rome, were essentially an attempt to establish a dialogue with the all-pervasive world of photography advertising. Influenced by the mindset of the UK Electronic IDM music scene, I would sample fragments of photo-ads rearranging them in quasi-geological collages. Then, I would freely trace over them using a charcoal stick or a sharpie, juxtaposing swaths of acrylic paint.

Looking back, those works were attempting to balance the high definition of photography, and the low-fi primitive nature of my gestural strokes inspired, still to this day, by the ravenous beauty of the Tyrrhenian Sea coast where my roots are. Growing up in Central and Southern Italy made my discovery of art very organic. I didn’t need to look for art, natural and manmade beauty was simply and essentially all around.

My architectural gateway to the US—from Rome—was the high desert of Arizona. In 2007, I worked in the Arcosanti planning department of architect Paolo Soleri (AIA Gold Medal, Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion, Smithsonian Medal for Lifetime Achievement). At Arcosanti urban laboratory (an hour-drive north of Phoenix), I explored the conviction that architecture and art are practices incorporating all the fundamental spheres of living. That revelatory experience traced the guidelines for the following fifteen years of my practice as an artist and architect-builder here in Los Angeles.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I owe a lot to Los Angeles: a synthetic yet intimate place I call home. All things considered; it has been a smooth road. L.A. welcomed me from the very first days in Echo Park.

My artistic practice could be best summarized by saying that at the core I produce notes, intuitions, marks on an extroverted surface. Finding, and most importantly retaining, that very extroverted surface has been the challenge through the years—especially after the pandemic.

This city can be very isolating. I feel we all have the tendency to retract in our little bubbles which periodically burst—we may change home, jobs, colleagues, some friends relocate—leaving us stranded and forced to patiently mend relationships. Without the sounding board of a close or even distant audience it is very difficult to be creative. That is why I welcome the opportunity of this interview to hopefully expand my two-way dialogue with the community.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My creative practice embraces both art and architecture. As an artist, to ensure the integrity of the moment, I work with rapid strokes like a calligrapher in an essentially two-dimensional space. I record time by “writing down” different characters and symbols that reveal an exchange between forces in a temporary equilibrium. I use signs, symbols, and forms to represent notes, intuitions, and marks. I work with engobe on carved clay, ink and gouache on handmade paper, and acrylic paint mixed with ocean sand on paper or canvas.

As a native of Italy, spatial relations and the density of signs have been strong determinants of my aesthetic. I prefer to paint or draw with rapid strokes because speed is important as a way of ensuring the integrity of the moment.

A few years ago, I participated in an art group show organized by Spirit Studio in Silver Lake. My work King and Queen won the appreciation of the attendees leading to the commission of a public mural on one of the parking lot walls. Feeling the viewers’ validation of my work, and realizing the polyhedric value of public art, made me commit even more to a creative process that must build bridges.

Another, more commercial, opportunity to be involved with the Angeleno public sphere was my participation as architect and construction project manager in the design-team of Studio Fuksas (AIA Honorary Fellowship, RIBA) for the $500-million refurbishment of the Beverly Center.

The challenge was great, and detractors were many—in retrospect, I feel that their prophecy didn’t come true! In fact, the 800-feet-long and eight-story-high La Cienega Boulevard elevation was turned into a dynamic experience by implementing a metal mesh that throughout the day, with its organic curves and diamond-pattern, reacts to natural and artificial light in unexpected ways aerifying the otherwise over imposing architectural mass of the 886,000 square feet mall. The brutal stretches of exterior walls and soulless interiors from the 1980’s are now gentler and have acquired a poli-dimensional presence where natural light reigns.

As an architect-builder, I bring a European feel to design at all scales. This aesthetic refinement is coordinated with cutting-edge building technologies rooted in southern California architectural legacy. My decade of experience in Rome repurposing historic and existing buildings reflects my passion for authentic sustainability that emphasizes energy and healthful indoor-outdoor environments.

In my creative practice I put a lot of emphasis on the process. As an architect-builder I believe that residential and commercial bespoke design is best implemented through effective management and fruitful engagement with the project stakeholders during design and construction.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
My artistic practice carries the influence of the Transavanguardia movement of the 1980s and the Italian post-war informal and polymaterialist production. I seek to bring back emotion, figuration, and mysticism into art through drawing and gestural painting. I don’t really have one master but rather a galaxy of past and present creators I look up to for their astounding capacity to explore the fields of research I happen to be interested in. Some of them I have already mentioned above.

I am also very interested in Adriano Olivetti’s thinking—greatly influential for Steve Jobs’s research at Apple. Olivetti’s concept of Integrated Design—subject of a 1952 MoMA exhibition—according to which “production and esthetics, efficiency and design, rationality and beauty had to be aspects of the same composition” underpins my entire creative research.

That is why I decided to lend my artistic sensibility to design and architecture developing a series of ceramic panels that could partition, like free-hanging veils, open floor plan spaces or—when thought of as murals—amplify the surface of the architectural volume. In this regard, Fresno-based contemporary artist Sten Bitters has been of great guidance given the indisputable value added to the architectural space by his ceramic murals. One of them was recently installed on the valet walls of Columbia Square Living, a few blocks away from my studio in Hollywood.

Bearings is the first clay veil-mural I built a few months ago. It is approximately a 55-inch square consisting of eighty-one blue-engobe clay tablets. With its presence alone, the work creates an episode of spatial beauty while inviting meditation on how our body orients itself in space. Bearings opens to the multiplicity of directions and choices. The everchanging relationships between three prime elements – Y, Arrow, and Blue Engobe – inform and orient each clay tablet face one after the other. Through repetition and seriality, the viewer intuits a transition from signs to symbols to language.

The clay veils-murals are not meant as decoration but as integral and essential part of the architectural space. Paying homage to the California mid-century architecture concept of authenticity of material and raw textural beauty, the registering surface of each tablet with its specific materiality and sense of urgency is the essence of the work and its substance, eliminating the need for any other interpretation. Each tablet displays structural elements of the conditions of contemporary art and architecture such as “mutability, temporariness, contradiction, and love for the detail,” to quote art critic Bonito Oliva on occasion of the 2008 exhibit La Mano Decapitata (The Beheaded Hand).

At my firm, STABILE architecture | construction, clay is also used to create concept models exploring and testing early spatial ideas—the clay maquettes precede any digital 3D modeling efforts. A few months ago, this same approach to design was implemented for the concept development of the Atoll Residence here in Los Angeles. Like an atoll, the dwelling is imagined as a cluster of islets—the actual rooms—anchored to a unifying roof deck. At the ground level, the interaction between the organic volumes generates a pliable and dynamic open space seamlessly connected with the outdoors. The intimate small scale of the rooms is playfully juxtaposed to expansive areas ideal for when friends come over.

To support my community outreach, I enjoy organizing periodic gatherings at the studio located on the second floor of the Cherokee Building in Hollywood. Bearings and Atoll Concept Model were on display when we last gathered in July. I am planning the next open studio for early 2025—details to be announced on my Instagram and Facebook accounts. Please come visit!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.liviostabile.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livio.stabile
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557406119563
• Other: https://www.stabileinc.com/integrated-design

Image Credits
Livio Stabile