Gru, 1988

Gru is a rectangular prism, a closed volume that bears no resemblance to the machine it is named after: no boom, no counterweight, no visible mechanical movement. It is, first and foremost, a casing, in the same sense as the ‘Contenitori’ created by Cavenago a few years earlier: a body that does not merely occupy space through the accumulation of solid material, as a traditional sculpture would, but encloses it, appropriating it by isolating it from its surroundings, creating an internal void protected by surfaces of galvanised sheet metal, aluminium and stainless steel.

The only element which, on closer inspection, suggests a possibility other than that of a simple, stationary mass are the four wheels at its base. And it is a detail that radically alters the status of the work: Gru does not rest on a plinth – the quintessential conventional element of a sculpture designed to remain immobile, separated from the plane on which the viewer moves, enshrined as a unique and untouchable object. On the contrary, the wheels place the structure exactly at the same level as the gallery floor, sharing with the public the same possibility – albeit only a potential one – of movement.

The title, which suggests the function of a lifting machine without the form revealing this in any way, thus asks the observer to mentally complete what the work refuses to represent: not a sculptural block to be contemplated, but a hypothetical device capable of claiming its own space and, if it so wishes, of carrying it elsewhere.