Machinery of shadows

To interact with the facade of a building is a challenge for any artist. The characteristics of the image and their interactions with material as capricious as glass, just as much as their relationship with the setting, convert it into a work that is both delicate and fascinating. There has to be present the responsibility which presupposes the influence of a work of this type on public space, since one treats the invasion the cityscape with the utmost responsibility. Obviously it is not until now that I see the finished work that I can more clearly assess the magnitude of the work and the courageous endeavour of everyone who has participated in it.

From my experience as theatre set designer, I have learnt to evaluate the sizing of an expression and its transference onto other materials as a double edged sword. Although it is certain that every artistic mark is enhanced with a certain naturalness as it grows, it is also true that its problems are made more evident; allowing the discovery of its defects which remain hidden when it is only a sketch.

My first concern was to create an image that would not lose vigour as it grew. It had to be taken into account that it was going to divide itself into three sides, which gave partial readings because from no one viewpoint could one see its totality, a limitation magnified when the very orientation of the facades subject the design to three different lights. The image, therefore, should have both an overall composition and a fragmented one which, at one and the same time, were autonomous. The colour also worried me since I was able to assemble a suitable range, but in dealing with a glass wall it was difficult to control that which was reflected. Hence from the first moment I opted for a pronounced chiaroscuro (contrasting dark and light) since I would prefer to leave the responsibility of the muting to the tones which the glass would absorb in a given situation. In this way the colour would have a character that was always natural. I wanted, at the same time, to introduce a dynamic effect to counteract the neutrality of the architecture.

The first sketches led me to watery forms with medium tints and sinuous patterns, but the very structure of the building rejected an interaction so vapid and I ran the risk of creating a very large “Chinoiserie” (1). I immediately opted for structural patterns which had sufficient presence to compete with an external visual impact of whatever type. Although it brought me closer to an interesting solution, I needed to try not to lapse into an excessively cold construction, nor to load my effort with a characteristically minimalist interpretation of volume. I needed a structure that would evoke a presence that was, at the same time, subtle. One of the things that stimulate me creatively when I travel to Africa are the precarious structures made of wood, iron and cloth. These structures of apparent fragility are a lesson in engineering (engineering of ingenuity) which nevertheless do not renounce at all the emotional charge through the physical. The fact that the geometry is arrived at without tools, almost freehand or manually, “warms” it in a form that makes it more human. Perhaps our technological tradition is very distant from the more humanistic usage of geometry in considering it as a tool and not as a transcendental objective.

After some weeks of exploring and discovering activity which traversed through some tri-dimensional pieces, I was ready to present an idea which substantially has been maintained until its completion: the image of machinery, or more precisely its shadow, acting as a metaphor of an organic and primitive movement which portrays the rigidity of the prism. Inevitably there came to mind during this process the great gestural works which, since “The Battle of San Romano” of Paolo Uccello up until the “Napoleon” of Abel Gance, have filled our visual art tradition. At times, I see this conjunction of ideas as the shadow of a battle in three linked photograms.

The drawing entered a technological processing which meant that it escaped from my personal control. This scarcely fitted the revisions made in accordance with decisions we took and which, nevertheless, had to be taken in the period in which the work as produced. To see the work amplified through more than five hundred pieces of glass has been one of the greatest emotions of my artistic career since, although I was able to recognize each zone, each fragment, they also appeared to me to be totally new. As they distanced themselves from me, they became for that reason, more interesting.

Looking now at the building in all of its grandeur and with my scale drawing in front of me, I remember how I constructed the earlier models, and my own size relative to them. To create this work was like the frivolity of a giant with a doll house. Now the work has become enormous, and the fidelity to the original has been such that I have become the diminished one, as was Gulliver when he woke up. At times, glanced at from the floor, I have strange sensation that my own drawing could become animated and emerge running with no further effort.

But at last the moment has arrived for allowing this image to integrate itself into the city, contaminating and being contaminated, exposed to the multiple sensibilities of the passers-by. The reasoning during the whole process was that I would not forget the most uplifting premise of this commission: to create something with the vocation of being a work of art in the public domain, but stemming from private property. I sincerely believe this harmony is the great virtue of this work of mine and that credit be given to all those who have participated in it.


December 2008


(1) The term “Chinoiserie” refers to the European artistic style which incorporates the Chinese influence and is characterised by the use of designs characteristic of that Asian country, asymmetry, capricious changes of size, the use of lacquered materials and of abundant decoration. Chinoserie entered Europe approximately in the last twenty five years of the 17th century and was at its peak in the middle of the 18th century when it was assimilated by the Rococo