Sottiletta, 1988

Having experimented with Half Ton – an extreme utilisation of the exhibition space – the focus now shifts to the opposite problem. It is no longer a question of conquering volume, but of understanding its limits. How small can a sculpture become without ceasing to exist?

The answer lies not in scale, but in thickness.

Measuring 147 × 10 × 155 cm, Sottiletta condenses the entire research into a disproportion. The surface retains an expansive presence, whilst the volume is compressed to a minimum threshold. The mass does not disappear: it loses its physical presence. The sculpture continues to occupy space, but does so by relinquishing weight as its primary perceptual element.

The work constantly oscillates between body and surface. From one angle it appears as a volume; from another, it is reduced almost to a line. The third dimension is not eliminated; it is held back at the point where it risks dissolving.

The title, too, contributes to this process of lightening. Sottiletta replaces the language of monumentality with that of everyday consumption. The reference to an industrial product does not merely introduce a playful irony, but instils a principle of efficiency into the sculpture. The work seems designed to occupy as little space as possible, as if the issues of storage, transport and handling were to become an integral part of its form.

In this transition, the sculpture ceases to be a definitive object and takes on the status of an element ready to be moved. It is a shift destined to run through all his subsequent work. The wheels, a recurring feature in many works, do not represent means of transport, but the possibility that any form might change location. Movement remains a latent quality, a potential condition of matter.

Sottiletta does not propose a smaller or lighter sculpture. It proposes a different idea of presence, achieved not through the accumulation of material, but through its gradual subtraction.