GRADUS COLLECTION – IN BLACK SOUL GRANITE. PHOTOS BY DIGITALMOVIE, 2024

The Gradus collection consists of five bas-relief wall sculptures and five fully rounded forms. The concept stems from a study of Carlo Scarpa’s architecture, which is pervaded by stepped horizontal and vertical surfaces and archetypes of connecting stairways, making these graduated geometric elements a central theme of his aesthetic. In Grădus, slopes punctuated by tiny steps become omnipresent, the defining feature of the sculptures. These pieces transform into chiselled three-dimensional landscapes, graduated micro-architectures where light repeatedly vibrates across the surface, and the eye loses itself in the rhythmic play of light and shadow. Since the staircase is a metaphor for life—its constant ups and downs, its light and dark moments, its peaks, achievements, and certainties, along with the vertigo, fears, and falls—the constructed landscape becomes a reflection of an inner world.

This is not an impossible or distorted landscape like Escher’s, with graphic tessellations pushing the limits of our imagination, but a rational, tangible, complex yet logical universe. An abstract introspective dimension that uses the material’s depth to delve deeper into its core, like a Dantesque universe shaped into concentric rings. Concave circular shapes, reminiscent of Roman theatres, contrast with convex forms, echoing primitive versions of medieval shields. Vertical totems, akin to modern skyscrapers, stand alongside horizontal volumes, resembling the paving of piazzas and fountains. It is a timeless, heterogeneous landscape, carved into stone, left rough and rugged, hard and imperfect.