Page 22 - PAOLO STACCIOLI

Small cases and garish coats are now the identifying steeped in the promise of fertility and human warmth.
elements, from which colored ties spring forward. The In the first months of 2005, Paolo Staccioli’s repertoire
gate and the slight bend of the legs make it seem like is enriched by a new figure that, perhaps, represents
they are walking, but without sacrificing the ritual a more direct and immediate response to the stimulus
immobility that suggests the rigid inflexibility of the absorbed while observing the outside world. Fascinated
joints, as we have seen in the warrior prototypes. They by the images of the cardinals convention, which the
are characters from a theater of the absurd. For this media repeatedly presented during the election of the
reason, they speak so extraordinarily to our existential Pope, and, blinded by the sea of the reddish-purple of
condition. They are real men and women from our own their robes, Staccioli began to record his impressions,
cities, who are forced to wait interminable for trains and defining this captivating subject. The subject comes
subways that are perennially late. They are splashes of from the real world, but is then transformed, by the
color that animate the grayness of the platform; they are artist’s vision, into a fairytale like event. He observes
immobile, vacant, absorbed in thought that helps them the enormous and spectacular mass of his models and
tolerate the waiting, ready to spring forward en mass, confuses the visual data with the elements from his
like puppets, when the stop light turns green or when imagination, which in his mind, he has already distilled.
the crowed train arrives. He starts a new sculptural type, and more than ever, he
If Staccioli didn’t have such extraordinary ability to plays with the striking qualities of the undulations and
isolate theses elements, gathered from daily life, and the splashes of color, letting the free flowing vermilion
render them abstract, by transforming them into timeless conquer, finally, almost the entire modeled surface.
stories imbued with ironic overtones, then the overall The plasticity of the bodies maintains the thick and
feeling would be lost, perhaps, in elegiac chronicles. physical form, rapidly modeled, and clearly showing
Instead, the travelers surrender to the artist, who places thumbprints. These bodies are hidden and cloaked by the
them in unlikely boats and wagons, or he relocates them swelling scarlet robes from which emerge small heads
onto the necks of the vases and spheres, as he did with covered with vermilion caps. The cardinal becomes a
the “putti” and the dolls. So again, we see the travelers subject for Staccioli; yet, it is different from the others
emerging from the slab, gathered in flowing queues, because it has been created specifically for a grand
solemnly walking toward the viewer, with a multitude installation, which was presented to the public in June
of small suitcases, and amidst the various planes of the 2005, at the historic Pasquinucci Pottery, in Montelupo
relief are sketched long parades of little horses and Fiorentino. It is an extraordinary and bizarre conclave,
bizarre animals. So, what might have appeared as an suspended in the moment when, after the election is
ordinary middleclass commuter, regains a lyrical aura, a concluded, the candidates go disappointedly on their
marvelous traveler ready to plough an uncontaminated way.
part of the imagination, on board an unlikely vehicle. One hundred and twenty sculptures descend from a
It is clear that Staccioli, in dealing with these subjects, pyramid. They are articulated in groups that linger in
intentionally opens the discussion of a reality comprised bell towers, commenting on the events, while others
of many levels. So, contemplation suddenly becomes walk in solitude, closed up in their thought, and still
movement, whimsy poetic rhythm, and vivaciousness other who, at the base of the pyramid, are taken away
a delicate and consuming joy of remembering. In one in the familiar wagons, those fantastical vehicles already
of the many versions that deal with the subject of the used by the warriors and travelers.
travelers, we find, for example, a man carrying a child on A pursuit, loaded with irony and extremely Tuscan
his shoulders, horseback style. Here, the tone is much in tone, is the key to interpreting this work. It is a
more affectionate and biographic, since the melancholy provocation, but a playful and jesting one. So, it is this
overtone of this typical fatherly act is so very apparent. feeling that guided Staccioli in the conception of his
And, likewise, women, mothers appear – their breasts conclave, which, in the end, watches the compactness
and roundness accentuated – bringing to mind the of the participants dissolve in to many independent
attributes of a fertility goddess. Holding their children and intensely colored groups. He invites us, with his
by the hand, they are strong Pomonas full of life, usual frivolity, to appreciate the subtle allusion, the
strengthened by their immunity to the insults of reality; willingness to make light of it, the anti-rhetorical nature
they are poetically suspended in a world wonderfully of his approach to art making, and his personal dialectic

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