Paolo Icaro - modality: Modality

The group of works presented in this exhibition has been assembled under the name "Modality". Each work, in fact, presents a modality, "a specific way of thinking and doing" as Icaro says "towards being and becoming" a possible work of sculpture. Borrowing the word "Modality" from the world of music, the works on view suggest various developments, more or less significant, in the research of lost sculpture (adopting the suggestions of the first of the Invocations of the "decalogue-prayer" - "suggested by the solitude of sculpture"), as proposed by Arturo Martini (in his Sculpture, a dead language, 1947): "Oh that I be useful merely to myself". The description of some of the works presented in the exhibit clarifies the artists decisions. Spaccata, 2006: a piece of marble cut in half to reveal its interior, charges its bary centre, and, in its new equilibrium, it is held by two clips of forged steel. Interdigitali, 2006: seven small clay fingerprints appear on the same number of marble fragments, capturing and visualizing the smaller spaces between fingers. Monstrum, 2006: a pile of fresh clay laid vertically on a steel trolley wrapped in a transparent film so that it may remain soft and therefore susceptible to continual transformation, thereby throwing an ironic shadow on today's persistent monumentalism. Balance Line, 1989/2006: made of steel it reveals and enphasizes the "equilibrium" of a man walking, capturing and setting the characteristics of his gait in relation to his physical and mental state at that moment. Pietra di marmo, 2006: a way of holding in a hand-made lead network a heavy block of marble in order to have a better grasp of every visible detail framed in the mesh of the malleable metal. Pietre silenti, 1996: three big porphyry stones worn smooth by the water of the Adda river, broken into two, three or more fragments and then recomposed into a new unity by means of tinplated lead. Internets, 1997/2005: forms of space in a metal net hold, in a central point, a physical fragment of a virtual sculpture, a scroll, a piece of chalk or other material to indicate a hypothetical presence of a beginning or an end. The presentation of creations by Icaro from the 1970s, 80s and 90s gives us the possibility of making an artistic reconstruction leading up to his more recent works.