“I’m drawn to raw, expressive gestures and the idea of art as both an outlet and a form of evidence that you were here, that you felt something deeply.”
The Crossroads of Culture and Instinct
Steven Antonio Manes stands at the confluence of dual heritage, shaped equally by his Belgian upbringing and Italian lineage. His grandparents journeyed from Italy to labor in the coal mines of Belgium, anchoring his family’s history in a narrative of migration, endurance, and cultural interplay. This bi-national background did not fragment his identity—it enriched it. Growing up bilingual, he navigated life in both languages, but when it came to art, Italian became his native tongue of expression. It is the language through which his emotional landscapes surface, guiding his hand more than any conceptual framework ever could.
Faith, a quieter but equally potent influence, threads through Manes’s life, informing his approach to the unseen aspects of existence. This internalized spirituality doesn’t manifest in overt religious iconography but through introspection, silence, and an ongoing search for significance. These elements subtly infuse his work, shaping the way he interprets emotion, matter, and the passage of time. His artistic process is neither purely instinctual nor strictly reflective; it is both—a layered synthesis of personal memory, inherited belief, and emotional urgency.
The result is a visual language that reflects movement—not only the physical kind, between countries and cultures, but the internal kind, between memory and material. Manes’s body of work draws power from its autobiographical base, while simultaneously reaching outward toward universal emotion. Through his exploration of identity, legacy, and belonging, he renders his story not as a singular narrative but as a shared human experience. Each line, each form, becomes both a record of where he comes from and a meditation on what it means to feel, to search, and to be.
Steven Antonio Manes: Emotions that Bleed Through Material
Manes’s signature aesthetic rests somewhere between abstraction and neo-expressionism, heavily influenced by the Arte Povera movement’s affinity for simplicity and rawness. He doesn’t chase polish or perfection; instead, he seeks evidence—of presence, of emotion, of physical engagement. His work is gestural, often aggressive in mark-making, with scratches and movements that seem to arise more from necessity than from design. Whether he’s working in two dimensions or sculpting in three, he resists separation between disciplines, often seeking to let one form bleed into the next.
Themes of tension saturate his visual practice. He is drawn to opposites and the friction they generate: reason and instinct, spirit and flesh, surface and depth. This duality is not merely philosophical; it’s embedded in the very construction of his pieces. His drawings teeter on the edge of becoming objects, while his sculptural works often contain the immediacy of drawn lines. This interplay keeps his practice dynamic and allows him to constantly redefine what his materials can do and say. Paper—his chosen surface—becomes more than a medium; it acts as both stage and actor, absorbing the emotional weight of each stroke.
Among his most meaningful works is Il Cuore Ingannatore—The Deceptive Heart—a monumental piece that encapsulates the conflict between emotional impulse and rational control. Measuring 350 by 300 centimeters, the work offers both intimacy and magnitude, drawing viewers into the very push and pull that inspired it. Created during a time when Manes was navigating personal contradictions, the piece channels inner unrest into physical form. Its current location—a notary’s office—feels especially appropriate, serving as a quiet arena where heart and mind regularly collide. Through its scale and emotional force, the piece refuses detachment, demanding that the viewer confront their own interior tensions.
Chaos Ordered, Gesture Anchored
For Manes, the act of creation is not simply a decision but an imperative. There’s a push from within—a quiet urgency that propels him into the studio. While distractions are inevitable, they rarely derail his focus. His environment plays a critical role in nurturing that focus. He prefers a space marked by clarity and structure, where order creates the conditions for freedom. Music is almost always present, not as a distraction but as an ambient companion, guiding rhythm and mood without dictating them. This balance between discipline and spontaneity mirrors the emotional architecture of his artworks.
His connection to materials reveals his affinity for directness. Paper is his preferred surface, offering both intimacy and resistance. It invites the kind of physical engagement—scratching, tearing, layering—that characterizes much of his output. He has experimented with canvas but found it less responsive to his gestures. Sculpture, meanwhile, provides another dimension through which he explores emotional and conceptual weight. Whether working with plaster, concrete, or found objects, he remains committed to unrefined textures and unvarnished surfaces. These materials do not mask—they reveal. They carry memory, erosion, and the residue of contact.
Manes’s creative influences stretch from the high Renaissance to mid-20th-century innovators. Cy Twombly and Jackson Pollock opened his eyes early on to the potential of gesture and motion in painting. Pollock’s action-based approach resonated deeply, encouraging a method of working that values the act as much as the outcome. Willem de Kooning and Gerhard Richter further shaped his sense of texture and visual ambiguity, while Giuseppe Penone—of the Arte Povera tradition—embodied the emotional and tactile power of material itself. The presence of Michelangelo looms in the background of his sculptural thinking, serving not as a model to replicate but a master to respect.
Steven Antonio Manes: The Future as Contour and Mass
Though his current practice is deeply grounded in the expressive possibilities of paper and raw sculpture, Manes is actively expanding the parameters of his work. One path he is exploring with growing enthusiasm is the fusion of drawing and sculpture—artworks that do not merely imitate volume but command space physically. These hybrid forms would push his current visual language into new territory, breaking the boundaries between line and object, image and form. It’s not simply about adding dimensionality; it’s about transforming the way an artwork inhabits a room and engages the body of the viewer.
Among his aspirations is the long-held dream of working in bronze. While his current materials emphasize immediacy and impermanence, bronze would allow for permanence—a way to cast fleeting emotions into enduring forms. He imagines one of these works eventually finding a home in a public space, not behind glass or on a pedestal, but integrated into daily life. Such a piece, accessible and permanent, would mark a new chapter in his artistic journey, where personal emotion becomes shared monument. This vision underscores a deeper aim: to move from private impulse to public resonance.
Yet even with such ambitions, Manes remains aware of the practical limitations of time and energy. His mind overflows with ideas—far more than he could ever fully realize. But rather than seeing this as a burden, he treats it as an ongoing conversation between vision and possibility. Whether in the confines of his studio or projected into the open air of public space, his work continues to seek new modes of being, new ways of bridging material and memory. Through every gesture and surface, Steven Antonio Manes creates not to escape life’s contradictions but to dwell fully within them.
