Tempio Industriale, through his artworks, tries to rediscover the religious identity of contemporary men through the simplest, and therefore authentic and sincere forms: basic drawings, humble altars, rusty icons, simple ex votos. The works of Tempio Industriale are made with the garbage of the contemporary society: scrap metal found in the street, debris forgotten in abandoned factories, forgotten religious decorations for sale in fleas markets. The poor value of the used material represent the vacuity of the products of our society, that shortly transforms everything into garbage, because a new product replaces the old one. True value is not measured by money: these humble objects want to express the popular faith and the devotion and respect that is due to the Sacred.
The Tempio Industriale logo is a fusion between a church and a factory. Or rather: it is a church built on a factory. I imagined a future in which churches and factories no longer exist, but in which the need to gather and pray remained alive among people. I started from the classic stylized factory with oblique glass roofs to let the light pass and then i added a pointed roof and a rose window that remind me of the classic country churches: the factory where the grandparents worked and the churches where the grandmothers went. For me, this is the main logo of Tempio Industriale, while the other logos collected in these pages are a sort of Exercises in Style “a la Raymond Queneau”.
The modern megalopolis are unlivable and they all look the same: a living hell of traffic and micro criminality, a labyrinth of malls and streets.
In the modern cities people live in the traffic to go to work to earn money to buy things...not always needed.
The food is the same from Jakarta to Los Angeles, the chains of shops are the same doesn’t matter if you are in Casablanca or Manila, people wear the same brands of clothes in Beijing or in New York, people listen to the same music and watch the same shows across the world; everywhere is spoken a basic English that flattens the level of the conversation between individuals. The world in too many places looks the same because of a savage Westernization.
Queretaro 2023
Doha 2023
Doha 2023
Doha 2023
Riyad 2023
Istanbul 2023
Puerto Vallarta 2023
Puerto Vallarta 2023
Riyad 2023
Doha 2022
Doha 2022
Doha 2022
Dubai 2020
Doha 2022
Torino 2018
Dubai 2020
Queretaro 2022
Doha 2022
Ryad 2019
“Not to notice the putrefaction of the modern world is an indication of contagion" - Nicolas Gomez d’Avila, Escolios II
The pieces used for these artworks are the forgotten objects that rust in the streets of our metropolis.
Puerto Vallarta 2023
Puerto Vallarta 2023
Doha 2022
Dubai 2020
Jakarta 2018
Jakarta 2018
Manila 2019
Manila 2019
Dubai 2020
Dubai 2020
Compostela, an exhibition of Tempio Industriale in the Museum of Sacred Art of Queretaro (Mexico).
24 August - 16 December 2023
In partnership with Impulso Art Gallery and Un Quadro di Te
Valerio Perino alias Tempio Industriale nació en 1982 en Turín - Italia, la ciudad de Fiat y de la Sábana Santa, un lugar donde conviven una tradición industrial y una religiosa.
Sus obras son una puerta que da a un lugar y a un pasado olvidado.
Si bien utiliza materiales recogidos de espacios abandonados y en base a valores ligados a una tradición religiosa e industrial que está desapareciendo de las calles y las casas, sus iconos sagrados son sumamente actuales. El artista pretende superar la secularización y homologación de la sociedad a través de obras sencillas, con un significado inmediato, que reflejen la cultura y el contexto contemporáneo. Tempio Industriale trae la Fe de poblaciones lejanas y trabaja con su experiencia y los materiales que ha encontrado, manteniendo su dedicación y respeto por todo lo Sagrado. El artista lucha para complacer el deseo de una identidad religiosa y darle la oportunidad de cuidar de nuestro Espíritu.
A serie of pictures take in 2005 in an abandoned steel mill nearby Turin transformed into contemporary holy cards. Classic religious images integrated into a forgotten landscape that once upon a time was full of life, hopes, sweat and tears.
Apparition
Last Supper
Resurrection
Via Crucis
Saint Francis
Saint Sebastian
Crucifixion
Sacred Heart of Jesus
Nativity
Trinity
The potential of the collage is infinite, and allows who doesn't have proper painting skills to create imaginary landscapes and worlds with an amazing level of detail.
from the exhibition catalogue:
SHEMA. The rustle of the Spirit
If we think of a medieval pilgrim with the cloak, the staff, the wide-brimmed hat, we could hardly consider him as an effective symbol to describe today's lifestyle. Our days show the imprints of a quick step distracted by a thousand thoughts, few know how to set out, admit that they are wandering souls in foreign countries, ready to move away from the usual landscapes to discover new horizons, even interior ones.
Tempio Industriale is one of those people, he is a perennial pilgrim who knows how to walk the world and is not satisfied with the easiest solution. He flanks us, allows us to align our pace with his, slowest and most meditative one, he helps us to look around us to discover what we have abandoned along the way, which goal we have lost sight of. And are precisely the fragments that we discard every day that attract him and activate his creative process, demonstrating an extreme awareness for each smallest piece and, consequently, for our life. He bends down, collects bolts, screws, washers, nuts, iron wires and razor blades, he combines them with crucifixes, Orthodox icons, statuettes of the Holy Mary and angels and renews their existence. He does not get a random jumble, but a harmonious set of elements that enhance each other without distorting themselves and that, on the contrary, are consequently enriched with new and pregnant meanings linked to the tangible and divine level.
The artist places the religious representation in a privileged position, surrounded and protected by recovered materials. The composition is simple, made with few elements, just to condense the highest Mystery. What the eye perceives is a refined structure, as only the essential can be. Our gaze is directed towards the center of the work to ensure that it carefully observes these modern icons. They are so bare also because they ask us to reject the dull spiritual art which we are used to, which appeals to ephemeral forms and even more ephemeral values. Tempio Industriale protests against the appeasement society, which forces us to abandon local traditions in favor of an insignificant social and religious homologation. For this, he inserts golden bullets, toy soldiers, tear gas canisters or bloodstains into his works.
Yet, this is not enough, we must take a further step back to underline a strong detachment from the West and to return to it powerfully regenerated. The Piedmontese artist uses stylistic features of a clear Christian matrix that refer to the traditions of Eastern Europe. For this reason, the use of the icon around which the industrial elements revolve is so fundamental and substantial for Tempio Industriale. He creates a harmonious background, made up of industrial or everyday elements, often gilded, that recall to our mind Byzantine mosaics and medieval altarpieces. To make his message understood in every part of the world, the artist adds prayers and invocations in different languages. Matter rises to a transcendent dimension, but the industrial element allows us to remain deeply anchored to reality. Before our eyes we contemplate immanent icons, inherent in the mechanics of everyday life, which force us to an eschatological reflection and which apply to be a bridge capable of crossing the abyss that divides the known reality and the divine plan. In these images we find authentic travel companions. They are with us, they indicate a way, they support all the important moments of our existence. The location of each artwork, in fact, whether in homes, along the streets or in places linked to worship, is an integral part of the poetics of Tempio Industriale and completes and transmits its meaning. It is not enough to be in a sanctuary, but there is the essential need to occupy an intimate corner in the houses and to go along the roads of the world.
We contemplate and meditate. We are transfigured into modern pilgrims, we raise our eyes from the road, we focus on a new path and we find a real goal. Only arriving at the end of the journey we realize what we have collected from the ground, what we have internalized and which moments will remain forever engraved in our consciousness. "Where are you going?" The icons whisper to those who listen to their rustle. We hope to answer that yes, we left, we have embarked on a journey. Now we just have to continue on this path.
They say that when Pope Benedict XIV (PP. 1740-1758) was told about the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico, he exclaimed, “Non fecit taliter omni nationi.”
The Latin phrase derives from Psalm 147 and means “He has not done thus for any other nation.”
This is a serie of 34 drawings of the Virgin of Guadalupe made out of the pages of an old atlas of Mexico.
“An icon is not a simple wooden board depicting an effigy. The icon has absorbed, through innumerable generations, the waves of secret implorations, of ardent prayers, which have risen to the sky from the torn apart hearts, and all this accumulated fervor is reflected on the faces of those who pray.” Alexy II, Patriarch of Moscow
“If the Sacred disappears, the Art disappears” Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, Barbarico
"Man cannot be the end of man. If there is nothing to rise towards, man remains devoid of substance "Nikolay Berdjaev, New Middle Ages
“IXIPTLA”
The war of images, five hundred years later
A project by Valerio Perino - Tempio Industriale
There is a book by Serge Gruzinski called "The War of Images", published in 1994. The French author writes about the evolution of religious figures in Mexico in the last five centuries. After the arrival of the Spaniards, it changed the way of seeing and representing the images of the pre-Hispanic gods and also the religious images of the conquerors were modified. The exchange between the two cultures was made even more difficult because the two peoples had great differences of thought and representation, which led to many misunderstandings.
In his book, the French historian introduces the concept of Ixiptla, a Nahuatl word that has traditionally been translated and considered synonymous with image and representation. Ixiptla has as its object the divine presence. Before the Conquest, it designated various manifestations of the divinity: Ixiptla are the statue of the god, the idol, the divinity that appears in a vision, the priest who represents it by covering himself with his adornments, the victim destined for sacrifice. Where the Christians looked for idols, the Indians saw ixiptla. The Franciscan evangelizers also used this word to describe the Christian icon or the image of the saint.
The lack of mutual understanding led to the destruction of idols, the creation of inappropriate and unauthorized images, accusations of blasphemy, but also to new representations and curious situations of misunderstanding that gave rise to new iconographic images.
“Ixiptla” is an artistic project created by Valerio Perino; Italian, graduated in Sociology of Religion, under the pseudonym of Tempio Industriale, is dedicated to the creation of works of contemporary sacred art. This project aims to renew the unauthorized images and misunderstandings of the post-Conquest era with a contemporary look, using current techniques. The artist's intent with his works is to meditate on these contradictions and celebrate the peculiarities of current Mexican culture, accepting the complexity of past history. These works are a celebration of the roots of Mexico.
This project is made up of more than sixty works that capture the main images that characterized this clash-encounter between cultures and worlds. Each of these works has a story of syncretism, confrontation, misunderstanding, decline, success and exchange. This exhibition wants to be a starting point for reflection about one's own identity and the identity of the other.
“I believe in Russia, in her orthodoxy. I believe in the body of Christ. I believe the new Advent will be in Russia”. The Demons – Fedor Dostoevsky
"We must abandon modernity for the kingdom of the sacred, and build our outpost there" Alexander Dugin, The fourth political theory
“What to do in the night if not affirming the possibility of light?” Alain de Benoist
This art installation was selected for the project Think Big! and presented at the 2020 edition of the art fair Paratissima in Turin (Italy). to know more
We live in an increasingly secularized and desacralized society where materialism dominates our lives. Faith, religions and popular traditions are often considered an outdated legacy of the past. Tempio Industriale: Libera nos a societate spectaculi (Industrial Temple – Free us from the society of the spectacle) is an installation that represents an imaginary spiritual refuge from the moral decadence of contemporary Western society, a place for those who believe that there is something beyond the dimension of the visible. This temple is a personal chapel where are gathered modern ex votos of people that try to survive the society of the spectacle and who express a prayer for a grace received. The low value and simplicity of the materials used denounce the emptiness of the products of our society which in short time transforms everything into garbage, since a new product must replace the previous one. The altars collected in this installation want to celebrate the popular faith that resists in the materialistic society.
This is a serie of more than 70 ex votos that i created for the project Think Big! at the 2020 edition of the art fair Paratissima in Turin (Italy).
"The benefactors of humanity are not those who invent for it colossal artifacts, but those who leave small altars" - Nicolas Gomez d’Avila
Museo Diocesano di Cortemilia (Cuneo - Italy) - a.D. 2021
This is part of the collaboration between Tempio Industriale and the brazilian video maker Cafè Anderson from CopacabanaLab.
2019 - Ryad, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
2020 - BIAS, the Biennale Internazionale di Arte Sacra
2017-2019
A selection of the first artworks of Tempio Industriale
Turin 2017
Turin 2017
Turin 2017
Turin 2017
Turin 2017
Turin 2017
Turin 2017
Mexico City 2017
Queretaro 2017
Guadalajara 2017
Queretaro 2017
Turin 2018
Jakarta 2018
Jakarta 2018
Turin 2018
Before the coming of Tempio Industriale, existed the Ordine Industriale, its predecessor. Between 2004 and 2010 The Industrial Order was a group of friends with whom I went to visit the large abandoned factories left to rot on the outskirts of our city.
We were going there almost every Sunday, when others were going to church, to the mall, or to the stadium. We were celebrating the Sunday ritual of urban exploration: we strolled through the bare and dusty corridors, ate a frugal meal on the abandoned roofs, drank hot tea in the courtyards covered in wild vegetation, looked for old objects to collect.
2008