Memory of a ride 4., 2026

A Memory of a Ride presents a series of black-and-white ink paintings reflecting Gastaldi’s memories of travelling through the region by bicycle and as a passenger in friends’ cars. Photographs and videos captured during these journeys form the starting point for the works, but are not treated as images to be reproduced. Instead, they become fragments of visual memory.

Unlike a camera, human perception is shaped by emotion, attention, and personal experience. Gastaldi alters light, composition, and proportion in order to reflect not the objective appearance of a scene, but the way it was experienced and remembered.

Using black and white ink, with only traces of colour appearing as fragments of remembered impressions, Gastaldi explores the nature of memory itself - selective, incomplete, and emotionally charged. The resulting works seek not to reproduce a view, but to convey the experience of having encountered it.

The choice of materials extends this exploration of memory and traces of experience. The works are created on handmade paper, chosen for the presence it carries - the traces of the hands that shaped it. Made in India and combined with Chinese ink acquired in Singapore during Gastaldi’s studies of Chinese calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting, the materials bring together fragments of different journeys within a single image.

The materials carry traces of previous encounters, while the works created upon them become new records of a temporary belonging to the landscape of the Moselle region.