Davide Prete

The Green Bird

Epoxy Infiltrated 3D Printed, Silica Sand

2020

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Artist Statement

Born in Treviso, Italy, Davide was introduced to the art of metalsmithing by his father Alessandro and by the sculptor Toni Benetton. He studied jewelry and metalsmithing at the Institute of Art in Venice. In 2003, he obtained his degree in architecture at IUAV, Venice, Italy.

Davide worked in Italy as an architect for several architectural firms, especially with Toni Follina. After meeting his wife in Zimbabwe (during a whitewater kayak trip) he moved to the USA in 2007. In 2010 he earned his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Fontbonne University, Saint Louis, where he studied under the guidance of Hank Knickmeyer and developed a personal sculptural process, mixing traditional metal casting and new technologies such as 3D printing and laser scanning.

In 2010, Davide moved to Washington, DC and started working as a professor of Fine Art. Currently he works at the GWU Corcoran School of Art + Design as professor of “Metalsmithing,” and “Sculpture and New Technologies” and at Catholic University as Director of the Fab Lab and lecturer in digital fabrication.

In 2014, Davide received his diploma from Fab Academy, an outreach project from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, where he studied digital fabrication with Neil Gershenfeld.

His work has been shown at national and international venues (Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, England, France, Finland and the USA) and his urban scale sculptures are installed in Italy and USA. Recently, his work has focused on new technologies such as 3D printing and laser scanning combined with traditional metalsmithing techniques. On his last projects, mathematical equations provided him with a pretext to connect figurative images with a new language, to discover what he called “A new forms of shamanism.”

http://www.davideprete.com/