Gianni Depaoli is an artist who lives and works in Candia Canavese, in a former cold-storage warehouse renamed Museo Menotrenta, characterized by its former refrigeration cells now transformed into studios and exhibition spaces. Before him, three generations of his family worked in that very place, becoming entrepreneurs in the international fishing industry. Today, Museo Menotrenta is Depaoli’s research center, where he studies the alterations of environmental and social resources caused by human behavior—significant and measurable compromises and deteriorations explored through his constant investigation of marine organic materials.
By collecting waste from the fishing industry, he analyzes and processes fish and cephalopod skins, transforming and ennobling the material without altering its natural beauty and transparency. In his works, the pursuit of natural color—guided by the manipulation of chromatophores found in these organisms, without the addition of artificial pigments—preserves the skin’s primary aesthetic quality. This patented research aims to stabilize organic waste, considering it the vital link between the indelible memory of life that has nourished humankind and the destructive actions carried out by humans themselves.
Since 2007, Gianni Depaoli has been addressing environmental and social degradation through project, installations, and exhibitions hosted and supported by numerous Italian and European museums and institutions, including the International Venice Biennale of Art, the Royal Palace of Venaria Reale, the Museum of Modern Art of Genoa, the Italian Embassy in Monte Carlo, the Park Museum of Portofino, the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Roma, and Monte Carlo Film Festival. In 2024, one of his works represented the United Nations Sustainable Development campaign “Hope in Action”.
