Columns

Colonne (Columns), 2001, is an installation conceived for the outdoor spaces of the Castello; it was inspired by an earlier version made for Villa delle Rose in Bologna. Three Doric columns, two covered in a patina of lampblack produced with an acetylene torch and a layer of mosses of different shades of green, are surrounded by a train track suspended from its top edge, along which a small train runs. The contrast between the leaden, gloomy but reflective material of the lampblack columns and the triumphant physicality of the gold color at their extremities celebrates the value of light, which the artist presents as an aesthetic and ontological revelation of a physical space, experienced as a place of enlightenment along a sort of ascetic path. The idea of movement (in this case the physical movement of the train)as change, and the suggestion of the landscape as an imaginative and evocative dimension, gives this work a poetic dimension.