MANIFESTA 7

Handheld Objects

Handheld Objects is Tabula Rasa's next event. On the long table at Alumix, Davide de Paoli's artwork will be exhibited. The artist from Bolzano, renown for his antropomorphic sculptures transformed into refined pieces of design, uses the experimental space of Manifesta 7 to revisit the relationship with the spectator. On the basis of similar experiences of sensorial sculpture in the 70's, masters of which – even if by different approaches – are Franz West and Lygia Clark, the objects from inviolable creation for the pleasure of the eyes, become elements of physical relationship, tools of a mediation between the imaginary of the artist and the perception of the visitor. The body thus becomes the site of the interpretation of the sculpture. The exhibited objects are far from being a tool with a preset function since they lend themselves to different uses, according to the imaginative capacity of those who handle them. An abstract form becomes a mask, a bowl, or a fruit dish. Starting from these assumptions, the artwork imposes itself as a critical and transversal object of the disciplines. Distant from the planning function of design that faces an explicit or implicit need, as well as from the merely visible admiration of the object of applied art or not. The nature of Davide DePaoli's sculpture is transitive, it completes itself only with the work of the spectator's interpretation and through this relationship, who is as much responsible as the artist for the positive outcome of the artwork.