Cyber, 2008

Cyber is a direct descendant of Senza titolo in A4 (2007): it belongs to the same size family and is part of the same group of small-scale works designed for the wall, with wheels that do not touch the floor but rest against the vertical surface of the wall. But whilst Senza titolo in A4 merely translated the pure standard format of the sheet into steel, without any variation (a parallelepiped with a regular rectangular base, faithful in its proportions to the bureaucratic dimensions of the A4 sheet), Cyber introduces a precise distortion of that very regularity.

The body is no longer a parallelepiped of constant cross-section, but a tapered volume, which gradually tapers along its length, almost as if to suggest an aerodynamic profile. It is a detail that alters the meaning of the entire project. Whilst Senza titolo in A4, in its geometric rigour, declared the purely administrative and standardised origin of its form, Cyber introduces, within that very same starting point, an allusion to speed, movement and aerodynamic drag: the very qualities that a real vehicle would need to move effectively, and which here remain a purely formal suggestion, since the object, hung on the wall with its wheels pressed against it, can never truly experience the aerodynamics that its shape promises.

The title itself, Cyber, reinforces this tension between form and denied function. It evokes a technological, almost science-fiction-like imagery of ‘cyber’ speed and efficiency, which the small steel object effectively belies, remaining motionless and suspended – a sleek silhouette condemned to the immobility of the wall. It is the same logic of the gap between promise and reality already seen in Gru: a name that declares a function, a form that suggests efficiency, and a physical condition that negates, point by point, any real possibility of that performance.