“It’s important to experiment with contemporary techniques and for me this technology is just another tool”, he explains. “You can’t make the curly bits without it”, he adds enigmatically. I’ve got an inkling of what he means. We’ve just visited his atelier in Pontives an alpine village strung out along the Val Gardena in the heart of the Italian Dolomites.

From the windows of the vast circular structure, bright sun beams flood in and illuminate a host of hauntingly beautiful human figures, their surfaces chiselled, etched and burnt into an extraordinary array of patinas. My gaze is drawn to a figure of a slender woman whose torso and bald head is covered in luminescent rivulets of hardened resin.