The artistic research of Luca Monterastelli (Forlimpopoli, 1983) takes its cue from some of the fundamental principles of sculpture, among which the artist himself includes “weight, the transferability of our energy onto an object-body, our perception of the three dimensions, and the relationship between surface and mass”. And he does so by using a variety of materials, such as plaster, terracotta, cement, and iron, for the metaphorical potential for transformation inherent in each one, but also for the symbolic and political value of the way they have been used down the ages. He de-constructs forms in order to rewrite them in a free-for-all of narrative tension.
In Weightless, Monterastelli’s new sculptural works question the shift from gravity to “weightlessness”, as the title suggests. “I want to examine how memory works,” he says, “and explore the origins of the narrative and its inevitable corruption. After all, Naples seems to be the perfect place for this: it’s a city full of phantoms and phantoms are the verses of history. And, in particular, this is the way the verses of this story are written.”
