Sottiletta, 1989

The form returns, with slightly altered proportions, yet faithful to the principle that gave rise to it. It is not a replica. It demonstrates that the same idea can be realised in multiple ways without losing its identity.

What matters is not the variation in dimensions, but the persistence of a rule. The volume continues to undergo a process of compression. The mass relinquishes its physical prominence to allow an essential presence to emerge, built upon the unstable relationship between extension and thickness. The sculpture occupies the space without imposing itself through its weight.

In this second version, the form appears even more autonomous in relation to the original reference. The title retains the ironic tone of an object belonging to the industrial lexicon, but the reference to the commercial product now takes a back seat. What remains above all is a constructive principle: reducing bulk, simplifying the material, eliminating everything that is not essential.

It is a design approach that brings sculpture closer to the worlds of design and engineering than to that of the monumental tradition. The form is not conceived as definitive, but as open to adaptation, review and further development. The work becomes a prototype, not an isolated specimen.

This logic would underpin much of his subsequent work. The works would change in scale, apparent function and context, but would retain the same underlying tension: transforming sculpture from a static form into a structure open to transformation. Wheels, vehicles, compressed volumes and, later, mobile erratic boulders all form part of the same line of thought. They do not depict movement; they preserve its possibility.

Sottiletta thus confirms that form does not coincide with a finished object. It is the provisional result of a process, a construction that continues to engage with space through subtraction rather than accumulation.