Business & Money | Friday 16 September, 2016 5:27 pm |

After 110 years from its foundation, a time during which it has become a hallmark of world architecture, Margraf has inaugurated the first edition of Marble Stories in Chiampo, near Vicenza. It is an international exhibition, which will focus every year on art, design and architecture.

 

The first edition, titled #M16, where M stands for man to underscore the craftsmanship and manual skills of excellence at Margraf, and 16 stands for this year, was curated by Giulio Delvè, an artist of international renown who works between the cities of Naples where he was born and Berlin. This year's theme was “A Soft Stone Born from the Sea.”

 

Vicenza stone, also called soft stone, formed from the collapse of blocks of limestone, from the collapse of the coral reef in the warm, calm, shallow waters of a tropical lagoon that covered the present-day geographical area and was located at latitudes near the equator. This natural material which, once skilfully quarried and processed by Margraf, is used to create unique and timeless works of architecture was born from the sea. 

 

Margraf hosted 6 international artists at its headquarters for a one-week artist-in-residence programme during which they had a block of 1 cubic metre of Vicenza stone to shape as they pleased, from 3:00 pm on Monday, August 29th, to noon, Sunday, September 4th. On that day an authoritative jury comprising leading artists and art collectors judged their sculptures. 

 

The works will be exhibited from September 29th to October 1st in Verona at the Marmomacc International Trade Fair and sold for charity by the end of the year. The proceeds will be entirely donated to the Città della Speranza—City of Hope—Foundation, which has been engaged for years in the fight against paediatric haematological malignancies. 

 

The Marble Stories project aims to create a meeting place and a platform for dialogue between the world of stone and the world of art, architecture and design, placing man and technology at the centre. Every year the event will take different forms and follow different paths, always relying on curators of international renown. On even years the theme will regard man and on odd years technological innovation, a field in which Margraf is a world leader. 

 

Jury:

• Giulio Delvè (artist and curator)
• Walter Cassandro (antiquarian and art collector)
• Giorgia Lucchi Boccanera (gallery owner)
• Enrico Pasquale (Margraf sculptor and expert in marble working)

 

Winner: JAMES FAUSSET HARRIS (Jeddah – Saudi Arabia – 1982)

Title of work: “TRE MONDI” - THREE WORLDS

 

Artist profile: after graduating in sculpture, he currently lives and works mainly in Carrara. He has held a number of exhibitions and has participated in several international sculpture competitions and symposia.

Concept: This work establishes a bond between the thousands of years of sedimentation and stratification of living beings, materials and organisms that have created our Vicenza stone and the delicate flight of a weightless leaf that rests on the water creating ripples. The contrast between heaviness and the downward compression of the block of stone on the one hand and the grace of the leaf on the other creates a dichotomy in which the opposites become complementary. This concept is perpetuated in the thought about the space occupied by the artist's work in time, capturing the millions of years needed by the stone to become what it is, as well as the fleeting moment in which the leaf rests on it.

 

Motivation of jury: “Tre Mondi” is an extremely poetic work wherein the balance between technical expertise and the final outcome is well accomplished. We believe that the work has deserved to win the artist-in-residence programme for its great appeal and magnetic power that draws observers to come closer and touch it.

Of the all competing works, it is the one to have best interpreted the concept of this edition of "Marble Stories."

 

 

Other artists and works:

 

Alfredo Pecile (Buenos Aires – Argentina - 1954): painter and sculptor; in recent years he has focussed mainly on sculpture using different materials. In particular, he is engaged in experimenting with various types of stone, different techniques using wood and cement, assembling and recycling modern materials, such as plastic.

 

Title of work: “Il Mare Di Babele” - The Sea of Babel

 

Concept: this work is meant to represent the story of one of the many stories that make history, the history that will be studied by those who will come after us and learn of the human beings who died by the thousands in our seas while we were looking the other way, ignoring their cries and the cries of freedom repressed. They will be shocked by the fact that the history of humankind has always been made of movement, migration, meeting and knowledge and they will ask how could we have forgotten it. 

 

The waves of the sea build up vertically, creating a modern-day Tower of Babel, where people no longer communicate or listen to one another. The sea-tower occludes, obstructs and prevents movement and coming together; it becomes an insurmountable wall. And yet man-elephant does not stop or surrender to the inevitable. The man-elephant has a memory of his own that is as old as humankind; the man-elephant is meek and mighty, kind and powerful. The man-elephant is made of millions of steps, millions of bodies, and millions of voices. He takes to the sea on a fragile shell in search of freedom and he moves the weight of the world with his own weight.

 

Critical judgement: the sea is the protagonist of Alfredo Pecile’s work, his reflections on his being and an attempt to overcome his own limitations and to cross this insurmountable border. The column full of edges is severe and resembles a mausoleum of a regime, but a closer look reveals the overall resemblance with a reassuring/statuesque elephant. 

 

Ulrich Johannes Mueller (Bad Rothenfelde/ Strang – Germany – 1956): an artist and teacher of sculpture first at the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Napoli (Fine Arts Academy in Naples) and now at the Accademia delle Belli Arti di Catanzaro (Fine Arts Academy in Catanzaro); he has participated in numerous artistic and cultural projects and in international sculpture symposia.

 

Title of work: “Messa in scena” - Mise-en-scène

 

Concept: three elements make up this workgame made of Vicenza stone. It consists of two static masses and a vertical volume pointing indefinitely to the heights. Shapes built according to a canon of proportions of archaic forms coarse working play movement and condensation. All the measures are based on optimised measures rooted in the tenets of Feng Shui.

 

Critical judgement: Ulrich’s compositions are means of interaction and aggregation, archetypes that become time after time surreal and metaphysical agorae. They are an attempt to elevate the human soul both spiritually and physically over a stairway to heaven or they appear to be a bench where you can sit down with your feet off the ground.

It is like being suspended in a different dimension.

 

 

Pablo Augusto Garelli (Buenos Aires – Argentina – 1960): after teaching for many years in Argentina, in 1988 he moves to Italy where he starts his artistic experience working stone, marble, wood, terracotta and metal with experimental techniques. He holds courses for the design and creation of works, as well as drawing and sculpture courses. He participates in national and international symposia, performances, exhibitions and courses and he regularly works with other sculptors in projects in Italy and abroad.

 

Title of work: “Mare” - Sea

 

Concept: this work is meant to represent the motion of the sea. It is a blend of motion and the currents of the sea. The two dynamic stone elements complete each other forming a cavity, a void that everyone is free to read and interpret as they please. The interplay of light, the contrasts and passages, and the living relationship between the two volumes of material contribute to overcoming the limits of the stone that are rooted in its properties and characteristics, becoming a symbol of levity and dynamism.

 

Critical judgement: the waves of the Pablo Augusto Garelli’s “Mare” are a frame that invites observers to shift their gaze and refocus their attention. The relationship that is created between full and empty spaces makes observers look through that opening and to go beyond it with their imagination.

 

Riccardo Albanese (Salerno – 1977): sculptor, painter and performer, he has been a regular presence on the Italian art scene for several years now. Among his many shows suffice it to mention here "Quello che non ti piace ti dà da mangiare" (You make a living with what you don’t like), Agence Pour l'Art Contemporaine, Luxembourg 2006 and Doganella Zoo Changing Role, Naples, 2004. He has also participated in "Not Closet", Beaumont Public Galerie, Luxembourg (2007), and "Giardini. Luoghi della piccola realtà" (Gardens, Places of a Small Reality).

 

Title of work: “Pietra Morta” - Dead Stone

 

Concept: the ancient name of Vicenza Stone, which was also known as "pietra morta,” i.e., dead stone. The skull, the eternal symbol of the oxymoron of life and death. Memento Mori and negative truth that reminds us to live your days and play your hand well. The skull is immersed in a bouquet of weeds that grow in the Vicenza area, a symbol of a life without meaning, of a life that is a nuisance to other lives, a luxuriant, sturdy and invasive plant. An intimist thought that the stone transforms into a monument, the exasperation of a personal thought that becomes a universal concept.

 

Critical judgement: Vicenza "pietra morta" has been carved by Riccardo Albanese with masterly skill, fitting the exotic, esoteric element of the skull in an elaborate baroque architecture consisting of a bouquet of "Braga,” a weed that grows locally, almost if it was picked by the artist with a swift, spontaneous gesture, thus representing a bond with the surrounding landscape.

 

Fabio Chiarello (1978): professional carver and sculptor who works with a number of companies in the province of Vicenza, he started his career as a stonemason. He is well known throughout the Veneto for his numerous exhibitions and solo shows.

 

Title of work: “Schiuma di mare” - Sea Foam

 

Concept: the soft shapes of the scroll call to mind the idea of womanhood. A natural consequence of this is that it is fit and put right beside the male element, namely the fossil horn.

 

Critical judgement: in "Schiuma di Mare,” Fabio Chiarello brings to light the clastic material and fossil remains, which are the main elements composing Vicenza stone. He achieves this through the sensual interplay of Yin and Yang, the shell and the horn.