C-DUU, 2011

This drawing belongs to a different category from the small design sketches with which Cavenago usually captures his initial intuitions – quick, small-format sketches intended solely to establish the relationship between the elements of an idea that is still in its early stages. Here, by contrast, the very dimensions of the sheet – 140 × 220 centimetres – indicate an advanced stage of the project: it is a 1:1 scale drawing, in which every proportion, every curve and every measurement already corresponds exactly to those of the final sculpture.

It is no longer, therefore, a matter of jotting down a thought as it arises, but of verifying in concrete terms how that thought will behave once realised at its true size: the actual scale allows for the checking of visual balances, the relationships between parts, and the perspectives that no small-format drawing could anticipate with such precision. It is a necessary intermediate step between the idea and the final technical execution, a moment in which the project, now defined in its essential features, is put to the test of real proportions before moving on, in the next phase, to its translation into a technical working drawing for production.

Pastel and acrylic, materials that are still thoroughly painterly, are here put to use for a purpose that has little to do with graphic expression in itself: not a drawing to be looked at, but a drawing to be measured, the final visual check before the project definitively leaves the artist’s desk to enter the world of manufacturing.