Roma ’81

Bricks and concrete,
Arte e Critica 1981
29 July – 4 October 1981
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, Italy

“Gillo Dorfles invited Staccioli to take part in Arte e Critica ’81 organised by Giorgio De Marchis at GNAM in Rome. As in Venice, this exhibition was also in some sense proceeded and presented by his sculpture, which, due to the way it interacts with the city and its buildings, was necessarily set outside the ‘conventional’ exhibition place. The work of sculpture, which was placed on the building’s classical-style steps, became a sort of outside ‘landmark’ for the entire exhibition. But only this unusual foretaste of things to come, combined with the kind of manual ‘action’ associated with builders, actually come from the same ‘stylistic vocabulary’ as the wall in the Gardens at Venice. In Rome Staccioli added a fresh element, precariousness, which derived from shifting the axis of balance and was destined to become an integral part of his work. The static nature of the irregular polygon slanting along the entrance steps is uncertain and delicate. Sculpture placed on the outside of the ‘designated place’ for art looks highly unstable… possibly a metaphor for the fluidity of a system?”

Maria Laura Gelmini, Mauro Staccioli. At the roots of sculpting, Corraini Edizioni, Mantova 2008, p. 82