To coincide with the Salone del Mobile 2023 design week, Cadogan Gallery displayed a monumental sculpture of mine in the courtyard of the gallery in Milan.
MOMENTO is a double-monolith, two stones apparently poised one on top of the other. The intention is to immortalise an instant, to capture the moment and the absence of time, the ephemeral moment in which the two stones seem to fall. Time dilates and space compresses. At the same time it comes alive, it yearns. The static nature of the stone becomes dynamic, and the precariousness creates movement, takes on inertia and becomes alive. They are synonymous and opposite.
Stone balancing is the ability to place stones of various shapes and different weights in balance, but the theory is more complex, there are games of forces and pushes that counteract, balance and correct each other, with only one law: gravity.
It starts with breathing, something we have yet to learn to do; so said Giordano Bruno in the 16th century. The monks in Tibet knew as far back as the 6th century B.C. what this meant; it is thought that this is where the principle of this form of meditation lies: the art of balancing stones.
The granite of the Island of Elba has been known since time immemorial for its technical and structural qualities; so much so that as Giorgio Vasari tells us that seven of the great columns of the Pantheon were carved with this ‘granodiorite'. Some columns of Elban granite were also found during archaeological excavations of a Domus in the gardens of the Quirinal, the Palatine and the Colosseum. It was later used by the Pisans to adorn their cathedral and by the Medici family for the altar of San Lorenzo and the Boboli Gardens.
Copyright © Lorenzo Brinati. All rights reserved.
Visual identity and website by Pietro Giovanardi
Copyright © Lorenzo Brinati. All rights reserved.
Visual identity and website by Pietro Giovanardi