Opening reception april 7th 2010 - 7 p.m.
april 8th – may 22nd, 2010

Man used the term “cave” to define a missing space, a deep hole in the planet, an entity that in itself is a metaphysical doubt between the concepts of inside and outside, internal and external. Through its mold, ideally, it is possible to give a shape to something missing, creating the positive and concave side of a part of nothing that slowly branches out in an acute shapes, imperceptible and potentially endless.

Lupo Borgonovo’s practice moves through these oxymorons, the contrasts are thresholds that balance each other off. Also in the sculptures of  Medardo Rosso that back, concave side, and the front figurative one cover an equivalent and necessary function. He created back cavities in his works that, similar to small caves, penetrated inside the waxes. The side that usually faces the observer represents the place where the energy reveals itself chaotically. The same energy that marks the face in light, this dark side is disorder that generates order.

The sculpture for Lupo Borgonovo is a partial entity, a fragment that implies cosmic dimensions. Just as ruins are parts of cities affected by time, as a physical entity, the sculpturing process is in itself a material made to be transformed.

In this first solo exhibit the artist from Milan presents Ziqqurat, a cement shape made form the mold of a fountain designed by architect  Carlo Scarpa in Venice, through a reflection, which proposes itself like the absent pyramid of the sculpture. The missing part we perceive takes on ambiguous architectural aspects, recalling a temple of an ancient Central-American civilization or a funeral architecture.

Moving on through the exhibit, the sculpting methodology becomes real in Testa, a bronze head shaped by the artist using his own head. The result is a face without a shape, whose cavities highlight the fact that the sculpture is not a stable body, but the result of a constant action that fuels the shape. At the same time the dark matter is an essence without light that acts on the gravitational effects of the galaxies.

In Fase lunare, the object, empty of its functionality, exists in a dimension controlled by invention. The bowl, normal evolution of two hands that hold water, becomes a crescent moon. Even the glance is a material that can be modeled.

//////////

Lupo Borgonovo was born in 1985 in Milan. He lives and works in Milan. He studied and the Academy of Fine arts of Brera in Milan. Calco della caverna is his first solo exhibition.