On view will be 25 sculptures executed in oxidized steel and black patinated steel dating from 1996 to 2002. Among them one finds the study of the monumental Breda Door which will be placed in the Archaeological Park of the former Breda plant of Sesto San Giovanni in June, 2003; that is to say: S.F. 74, Breda Door 2001, oxidized 137x135x60 cm.; S.F. 44, door 1996, oxidized steel, 190x205x130 cm.; S.A.L. 1 1970-2003, painted aluminium, 330x60x91 cm., executed in collaboration with Alman S.r.l. of Monza; S.F. 70 Ur towers 2000, oxidized steel, 124x65x65 cm., and S.F. 92 pillars 2002, oxidized steel, 49x40x24 cm. As one can see, some are recent works and some completely new, specifically conceived for this exhibition.
In this new exhibition Michele Festa will thus be presenting the results of further explorations of themes dear to him and long pursued, like that of the “door”, of the “stele” and of the “pillar”. Themes which, as Anna Finocchi explains in her accompanying text in the catalogue, “confirm a basic principle which brings together all the phases” of the sculptor's artistic progress. And this principle is precisely “the will to intervene in and on space rather than to modulate forms and to define volumes”.
Festa's works, in fact, represent the evolution of a procedure in his work and sculpturing which are among the most individual, singular and atypical of the last few years. For Festa, work presents itself, today more than ever, as a rethinking of sculpture in terms of nature and proportions, and in relation with space. And from this there derives an original relationship, though we might also say primary and symbiotic, between sculpture and architecture.
And once again, A Finocchi is quite right when she claims that "Festa's thought is architectonic”. A thought which proceeds in an active and propulsive way around surrounding space. And it is this same space, in fact, which is essential and unfathomable, which still allows great sculpture to exist and to live on.