Valerio Berruti, Beyond Childhood

Link to the Italian version on Artribune

Before The Carousel sets off for New York, a visit to Valerio Berruti’s studio in Alba, among frescoes, models and the celebrated La Giostra di Nina.

The first thing that strikes you in Valerio Berruti’s studio is not the carousel that, in a few weeks, will reach Manhattan. It is the hundreds of children inhabiting the space. Drawn, sculpted, suspended on frescoes, hidden among models. Some seem to be sleeping. Others stare into the distance. None of them truly smiles.

The studio unfolds like a map of his work. On one table lie small 3D-printed self-portraits, which the artist uses to study the proportions of future monumental sculptures. Nearby, a fresco that has just returned from an exhibition awaits the final touches of restoration. On the walls, preparatory drawings, models and fragments of works alternate, all caught in an intermediate state, as if they were at once complete and still waiting to become something else.

This is also why one of the most common readings of Berruti’s work risks being reductive. For years, he has been associated with childhood. Yet after only a few minutes in his studio in Alba, it becomes clear that these children speak of something more complex. They do not simply represent an age of life. They are figures onto which each of us inevitably projects something of ourselves. Looking at them, we think less about children than about the adults we have become.

Among frescoes undergoing restoration, monumental models and thousands of preparatory drawings, the artist from Piedmont is completing preparations for The Carousel, the installation that, from July 15, will be among the key works in DAYDREAM. Air Becomes Art, the inaugural exhibition of the Balloon Museum’s first permanent venue in New York. Composed of eighteen large fiberglass birds, the work marks a natural evolution of Giostra di Nina, one of the most iconic pieces of his career.

Before the interview begins, Berruti walks me through his projects. He shows me the mechanisms of the carousel and tells me about the time a real fairground operator saw it for the first time and immediately declared that it was “all wrong.” He still laughs as he remembers the episode. Then he approaches one of the white birds and invites me to climb on.

“Don’t worry, it won’t break.”

For a few minutes, Giostra di Nina turns only for us. As the birds slowly rise and fall, it becomes clear that nostalgia is not the center of Berruti’s work. What lies at its core is something harder to define: the ability to slow time down just enough for an emotion to surface.

The Interview on The Carousel

The Carousel is about to arrive in New York. How does it feel to see this work leave once again?

Every time is different. What interests me is seeing how works that were born here are read by people with completely different histories and cultures. In the end, you can never really control what happens when a work meets the public.

Giostra di Nina has become one of your best-known works. And yet you told me it was almost born out of a mistake.

Because I did not want to build a carousel. I wanted to build a giant music box. When I exhibited it for the first time, a real carousel operator came, looked at it and said to me: “It’s all wrong.” He was right. Real carousels are not made like that.

And yet it still works.

Because it is a work of art, not a carousel. If a carousel operator had designed it, it would probably have been more efficient. But it would not have been this.

There are drawings everywhere in your studio. Even the sculptures seem to begin with drawing.

Because I see myself above all as someone who draws. I have never really felt like a painter. Even my sculptures are drawings that occupy space. Color is very complex, and very important. That is why I use very little of it.

Many people read your work as a reflection on childhood.

I understand why that happens. But I am interested in something else. When we look at a child, we almost always end up projecting something of ourselves. A memory. A fear. A hope. That is why those figures work. They do not speak only about themselves.

During the visit, you also showed me the miniatures of yourself that you use in your models.

It is a very simple system. I use them to understand proportions. I know my own body, and I know how I look at space. By placing a miniature next to the model, I can immediately imagine how the real work will be perceived.

There always seems to be a certain freedom left to the viewer in your works.

It could not be otherwise. There is the artist, there is the work, and there is the viewer. They are three different things. I may begin with a precise intention, but the moment the work is looked at, another story begins, and that story no longer belongs to me.

Does that also apply to works such as A Safe Place?

Of course. At first glance, you see a little girl with a life ring. Then you discover that the title refers to rescue operations at sea, and the image changes. Not because the work has changed, but because the gaze has changed.

At one point you said something that struck me: “Contemporary art is probably the only art form that can survive without an audience.”

It is a provocation, but only up to a point. The art system can survive even with very few people. I, however, remain fascinated by the opposite idea. I am interested in creating works that people encounter in their everyday lives.

Perhaps that is also why, in recent years, you have been moving increasingly toward public art.

Yes. I like the idea that someone might encounter a work while going to work, walking, or looking at the sea. Without preparation. Without needing to know who made it. The work comes first, before anything else.

What do you hope happens when someone encounters one of your works?

Nothing extraordinary. It is enough for me that they stop for a moment. That they ask themselves a question. Even a small one. If that happens, the work has already done its job.

After New York?

After New York, I return to Italy to take part in Narni Città Teatro, the multidisciplinary festival held in the Umbrian town from September 11 to 13, with a section dedicated to contemporary art curated by Antonella Lizzi. My large sculptures Figli degli uomini, two-meter-high aluminum casts, together with a selection of video animations, will enter into dialogue with the spaces dedicated to the performances.

Antonino La Vela

New York // from August 05, 2026
DAYDREAM. Air Becomes Art
BALLOON MUSEUM, 96 South Street

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