Leonardo Pivi

Daniele Ugolini Contemporary, Florence
Through 30 Aprile

Leonardo Pivi is best known for his fairytale sculptures. Inspired by antique figures, the artist deforms them to such an extent that they almost become caricatures. In this recent exhibition in Florence, the artist showed a new series of works which, adopting the materials and techniques of traditional sculpture, take their inspiration from a symbolically and religiously classical universe, but ironically turns the content on its head. Two white marble bas-reliefs depict religious scenes that have been taken to an extreme: a Madonna and Child, for instance, holds a brain in her hands and through the wound in Christ’s heart it’s possible to make out other internal organs.

On the opposite wall is a colored mosaic representing the cross-section of a stomach. Pivi’s interest in the ancient world—so rich in sacred symbolism—and his tendency to focus on representing it, can also be seen in a bas-relief that takes as its subject the first animal cloning in a marble-sculpted cell, and also in an installation consisting of a tiny Madonna and Child set in a glass test tube filled with a clear liquid. On the other hand, the smooth, rounded, and disproportionate reproduction of a chicken’s brain, which mockingly dominates the center of the first room, stands in complete contrast to the aesthetic canons of ancient sculpture and reveals the artist’s penchant for unusual images.

On two walls in the second room of the gallery, various fragments of stone, in the shape of human heads, are set out to form a circle. They mark the hours on the large faces of two imaginary clocks without hands. At first glance they could be small archeological finds. In reality, however, they are meticulously carved works of art. The show’s last exhibit is a sort of flowering plant composed of organic materials, such as small animal bones instead of stems and human teeth in the place of petals.




Daniela Ardizzone
Translation by Rosalind Furness