Pencils, charcoal, coloured pencil, paper tape, water, and eraser on cardboard.
Various sizes
2025 – ongoing
Botanica unfolds as a series of drawings made from direct observation of natural elements (branches, trunks, plants) filtered through memory and transfigured by a process of abstraction.
This series, like Romano’s entire body of work, reflects on a liminal state of existence: on that threshold where every form is always on the verge of dissolving or transforming. Even the drawing technique itself, apparently stable and “fixed,” becomes a shifting territory, marked by a continuous oscillation between presence and loss.
Each drawing originates from a phrase, noted in a moment of contemplation or intuition, which acts as the generative spark of the image. The trees depicted are never merely botanical: they merge, intersect, and enter into dialogue with human elements in a metamorphosis that alludes to the porosity between subject and environment, between permanence and mutation, creating a precarious balance in space and time.
Some parts of the drawing are treated with water and partially erased, creating uncontrolled “tears” in the surface of the paper, also connected to the idea of continuous transformation, which in this way involves not only the drawing itself but the very matter of the paper. Paper that in turn becomes an active material: often two or more sheets are placed side by side to form edges and junctions that the drawing crosses, contributing to the construction of a deliberately unstable surface.
