Mario Minichiello in France: Human Creativity, Up Close

A residency where making and meaning go hand in hand

From 26 September to 11 October 2025, FASTlab co-founder Professor Mario Minichiello joined a select international cohort at the 10dence platform – International Artist in Residency at Le Château d’Arvieu, France. Over three weeks, the château became a shared studio—part laboratory, part salon—where artists created side-by-side, traded ideas in real time, and welcomed immediate, honest critique. The result? A body of work that is unapologetically human: precise in craft, open to chance, alive to place.

“AI can imitate style. It can’t feel the weight of the brush, the stubbornness of pigment, or the tremor in the hand that turns a mark into meaning.” — Mario Minichiello

The artistic “oddness” that matters

Mario calls it his “artistic oddness”—that refusal to iron out imperfections. In these new works, the oddness is the point: graphite and ink that resist the neatness of algorithms; layered washes that allow the paper to breathe; marks that carry velocity, hesitation, and decision all at once. The pieces don’t just depict France; they metabolise it—provençal light, hill towns, market noise, chapel shadows—translated through a living hand.

Work in progress at Le Château d’Arvieu: sketches moving toward large paper works.

Place as collaborator

The residency’s daily rhythm—morning walks, studio sprints, evening critiques—shaped the work as much as the landscape did. Mario’s pages move between quick urban notation and patient, tonal studies; between the sweeping line of a ridge and the compressed geometry of a narrow street. Look closely and you’ll see small field decisions: where a line is allowed to fray, where an erasure becomes light, where a wash is pushed to the edge of collapse and then held.

Arvieu studies: light, line, and the argument between them.

Alongside the painted studies, Mario produced a series of linocut prints—works that turn restraint into drama. Carved in reverse and printed high-contrast, the linocuts distil gesture into structure: hands, faces, and city rooms described by absence as much as ink. Where the paintings breathe in colour and wash, the prints snap—a choreography of edge, pressure, and timing that only hand work can hold.

• Material intelligence: Every cut is a one-way decision; there’s no “undo.” That irreversibility becomes a kind of ethics in the work.

• Human signal: The slight tremor of the wrist, the way a gouge lifts at the end of a line, the pressure variation across a curve—these micro-signatures read as presence, not noise.

• Process → product: Trial proofs, marginal notes, and plate repairs remain part of the final image’s memory, an audit trail of making.

Signal and Silence (linocut, residency series)” — Carved and pulled at Le Château d’Arvieu; a study in gesture, pressure, and negative space.

Human vs machine: why this debate isn’t academic

As co-founder of FASTlab, Mario works daily at the intersection of art and technology. That’s exactly why these pieces matter to us. They are not a rejection of technology; they’re a reminder of what tech can’t do on its own.

• Ambiguity as signal: Where models optimise toward certainty, art can hold contradictions without collapsing them.

• Material intelligence: Paper, pigment, pressure, and time each “argue back.” That negotiation is a human feedback loop that can’t be faked.

• Ethical presence: Standing in front of a drawing, you meet the choices (and responsibilities) of its maker. That presence is a form of accountability.

Why it matters to FASTlab

What matters most isn’t the medium; it’s the method. Mario’s residency refines the way FASTlab builds, tests, and earns trust.

• Practice-led R+D: Human-in-the-loop, not tool-in-the-lead. These works sharpen our judgement frameworks for AI, design, and deployment.

• Methods we can teach: Structured time, peer critique, low-ego iteration—the residency playbook mirrors how we run FASTlab sprints and public pilots.

• Public value you can see: When people witness process (not just product), they trust new ideas faster—whether in Healthy@Home or GEN mutual energy.

• Design by constraint (linocuts): One-way cuts = one-way choices. The irreversibility of printmaking is our model for accountable systems design: decisions visible; learning explicit.

From studio to public

Following the residency, Mario’s new work will be exhibited at Melkart Gallery (2 Rue Antoine Gautier, Village Segurane, 06300 Nice). The show extends the spirit of Arvieu: process made visible, dialogue invited, craft foregrounded.

“These drawings aren’t perfect. They’re alive. And that’s the point.” — MM

About the residency

Each year, 10dence platform gathers 10–15 artists from around the world to live and work together for two weeks, transforming a modest space into a collaborative studio. This year’s cohort drew from the USA, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and more—cross-pollinating techniques, aesthetics, and conversations about geopolitics, climate, and culture.

See the work / Work with FASTlab

• Upcoming exhibition: Melkart Gallery, Nice.

• Commissions & collaborations: For inquiries about Mario’s residency works see Mario's Instagram feed - or reach out to FASTlab creative R+D partnerships, paul@fastlaboratory.org.

• Follow along: We’ll share a selection of Mario’s residency pieces and studio notes across FASTlab channels in the coming weeks.