Mario Merz Senza titolo (Triplo igloo)

cm 300 x diametro 600; cm 200 x diametro 400; cm 200 x diametro 100.

Mario Merz made his debut during the 1950s taking part in the Informal experiments and Abstract Expressionism with paintings inspired by organic forms. The shift toward sculpture took place gradually, first by piercing the paintings with everyday objects (an umbrella, a glass, a bottle, a raincoat), then through the creation of igloos, from 1968. In the second half of the 1960s, he also met Germano Celant and participated in the first exhibitions of the Arte Povera movement. In "Senza titolo (Triplo igloo)" three concentric igloos, welded by a metal structure, are built and at the same time revealed by the transparency of the glass. On the outside of each circle, resting on the ground along some points of the circumference, clay tablets are placed. Positioned on the glass are the numbers in the series discovered in 1202 by the Pisan mathematician Fibonacci, consisting of a sequence in which the next element is the sum of the previous two (1; 1; 2; 3; 5; 8). The numbers are made in neon, a constant element in Merz’s work: used with a disruptive lexicon, positioned to pierce canvases and objects, made up of simple beams of light, or used to convey written words, phrases, or, as in this case, arithmetic digits. In this work, created in April 2002 after an original design signed and dated 1984, Merz continues his research on the subject of the igloo. This archetypal form persists until the end of his artistic "Senza titolo (Triplo igloo)", 1984-2002 career and has testimonials in numerous examples made using techniques, sizes and materials that are different each time, suggested to the artist by the different situations and places in which he was working. Architecture and instability, internal and external, physical and mental space, organic and inorganic, the igloo is the summa of a circular thinking governed by a persistent dialectic between opposing elements.

No

B. Pietromarchi, Mario Merz. Igloo, Turin 2001. P. Colombo, M. Pignatti Morano, S. Vannini, S. Freddo, S. Borsato (eds.), Le Collezioni. Acquisizioni di arte contemporanea. MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, exhibition catalogue (Rome, MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo), Turin 2003, pp. 40-41. P.G. Castagnoli, I. Gianelli, B. Merz (eds.), Mario Merz, exhibition catalogue (Turin, GAM-Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea; Rivoli, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea; Turin, Fondazione Merz), Turin 2006. Mario Merz: Catalogue Raisonné. Volume One: The Igloos (forthcoming). www.fondazionemerz.org.

Foto Patrizia Tocci

Purchased from Galleria Tucci Russo, Torre Pellice

Installation