Disconnected (2024) returns to the fragmentation themes that first emerged in Frammenti (2021), but now explores them through the lens of personal crisis and transformation. Where the 2021 collection examined memory as scattered fragments seeking reunion, this work confronts the more difficult reality of feeling disconnected from oneself and the world. Stefano Contiero creates a visual language for emotional numbness, that particular emptiness that follows exhaustion, disappointment, or the overwhelming pressure to perform.
These fragmented compositions reflect this internal state through scattered geometric forms that appear to have lost their organizing principles, echoing psychological theories of dissociation where aspects of identity become temporarily fragmented as protective mechanisms. Sharp planes drift across grainy textured fields, their vibrant colors creating paradoxical energy within isolation. These fragments connect to Kandinsky’s pioneering exploration of inner spiritual states through abstract geometry, while also recalling the postwar abstraction of Art Informel, where artists like Wols confronted dislocation through scattered, unruly forms. Unlike the systematic approach of Frammenti (2021), these shapes drift without clear organizing rules, finding themselves adrift in digital space like aspects of self seeking reconnection after trauma.
Created in collaboration with Unit London in January 2024, the collection emerges from a period of personal reckoning that the artist describes as needing “a hard reboot.” The scattered forms become metaphors for the pieces of self that must be gathered, examined, and consciously reconnected. Each of the ten outputs presents a different configuration of disconnection (some more chaotic, others finding tentative patterns), all suggesting that fragmentation can be a necessary step toward authentic wholeness.
What makes Disconnected particularly powerful is its honest confrontation with creative and personal struggle. Where Tensione (2020) explored suffering as catalyst for transformation, this work confronts the more complex reality of emotional numbness and the need for conscious reconnection. The collection positions crisis not as dramatic breakthrough but as necessary pause, acknowledging that sometimes we must become strangers to ourselves before we can truly come home.