Gru, 1990

At first glance, this third version of Gru also appears to be a closed cuboid – a structure made of galvanised sheet metal, steel and aluminium that bears no formal resemblance to the lifting machine from which it takes its name. But it is in the detail of the base, once again, that the work reveals its true nature, and here with a further twist compared to previous versions.

The wheels, in fact, are not arranged according to the most obvious logic – that of full and even contact with the ground, capable of ensuring linear and predictable movement. On the contrary, they are arranged in such a way that they do not rest properly on the ground: they touch the floor not with their rolling surface, but at an angle, on their edges, as if the weight of the entire structure were bearing down on a single point rather than a line of contact. It is a minor detail on the overall scale of the work, but one that silently subverts its functional promise: a wheel that rests on its edge rather than rolling is no longer, strictly speaking, a wheel; it is a formal reference to a wheel, stripped of its primary mechanical efficiency, rendered unstable precisely at the point where it should ensure maximum stability of movement.

The result is an object that remains in a precarious balance rather than moving smoothly: a parallelepiped bearing the name of a weight-lifting machine, but which, at its base, promises no smooth transport whatsoever, but rather an uncertain, jerky gait, conditioned by the edges that touch the ground from time to time. As in Fuori squadra, here too the wheel ceases to be the device that guarantees perfect continuity of movement on a horizontal plane, and instead becomes the element that, by its very shape, declares the impossibility of fluid movement: Gru may perhaps move, but only by staggering, negotiating every centimetre of ground with the same uncertainty as someone walking on tiptoe across an unfamiliar surface.