Giuseppe Maraniello
Pescatore, 1994
bronze, steel wires, salt and sugar, 200 × 250 × 800 cm
Maraniello's work has always been a sort of "anti-sculpture", given that his work transgresses many of the canons of this discipline. You can see it well in this Pescatore (Fisherman), but the observations can be valid for the entire corpus of his production, including painting. First of all, the relationship with space, always free to the point of boldness. In this case the work uses a wall from which to protrude, but it is not a bas-relief: and its overhang is so strong that steel cables are needed to anchor it to the surface. The "fisherman" is in fact themed by the long bronze rod whose top looks downwards. Another canon transgressed is that of uniqueness, the sculpture becomes a multiple body. Not only do the cables become an integral part of the work, but it ends with a sort of urn, suspended from the pole by small chains, which consequently hangs in the void towards the observer. Finally, the materials: if bronze constitutes the noble ancestry of sculpture, the artist does not hesitate to pair it with common materials such as salt and sugar, which react to the atmosphere, opposing their reactivity and poverty to the courtly fixity of traditional sculpture.
from: Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro. La Collezione permanente, exhibition catalogue, edited by G. Verzotti, A. Vettese, Milano, Skira, 2007, p. 176.
