Since years we work on the decomposition of elements and their connection within a common balance (as in our mechanisms, in certain subjects, but also as a way to conceive the structure of our artworks), so this aspect of our work assumed a new perspective in a period where circumstances obligated everyone to stay separate and interact remotely. We felt that in that moment links and connections became more visible, precisely because they were resisting to the distance, and as well became more evident the connection of a whole humankind, geographically and culturally distant and heterogeneous, but that was facing the same situation in the same moment.
This same unusual global situation highlighted, for a little moment, also how nature reacts to the global balance that humankind imposes to the planet. So on a side we had a potential planetary empathy and the quick evolution of new structures and, on the other side, also the clear demonstration of how direct the relationship between humankind and nature is.
In April 2020, therefore, during the first lockdown due to COVID-19, we were forced to work each at his own home and we developed an idea: a shared sculpture built and existing (in its parts) in separated places, an artwork that’s divided, but comes together despite the distance.
This first “Surfaces” project was just symbolical and so, shortly after, we decided to expand it outside of the relationship between just two people and we created a sculpture that’s made by 12 different layers ideally coming from different materials, places, persons, contexts, uses. We’ve put those 12 different surfaces in connection between them and so all the resulting sculptures, that remain interconnected in time and space by the parts and the ideal and real contexts that they are sharing and that they will share.
A “surface” is the meeting point of two realities. A line that divides and connects adjacent or distant spaces: the surface of water, the skin of a whale, the glass of a smartphone screen. It could be a border, but it is also something to have in common; a blank sheet on which to express something or a window from which to see through. A “surface” is the thin line in which a relation occurs. “Surfaces” are, on a wide look, the relation between everything within a global balance and, on a closer look, a connection that exists between people, their spaces and their actions.
