Mary Pola, SALDATURE

Room 1
Invited by Leonora Hamill

I find myself experimenting and searching for Form and Matter through sculpture.
I have an epidermic affinity with materials such as sheet metal and barrels, materials that are rough, heavy and not very malleable. Today, even in sculpture, I choose iron. The reason for this choice lies in the simple fact that I work with the intention of bringing out its lightness from an element considered ‘heavy’. The emotional power that it conveys just by looking at it, through the rust itself and the nuances that come from it, creates a sort of addiction… It is a continuous discovery.
With the sculptures I wanted to work on thickness and depth, playing with the balance and dynamism of shapes, of the same material, with simple superimpositions, using very linear elements. I wanted to work on the more hidden aspects of the material itself, such as lightness and linearity. By reducing the size of the sculptures, with a play on depth and chiaroscuro and horizontal cuts, I tried to find light. A light that gives a sense of lightness to a sculpture that is in itself physically “heavy”. It is precisely by welding the finely cut sheets at a calculated distance that I am able to find and allow the light to filter through. A light that emerges through the material and that gives a sense of “discovery” to those who see it.
Often, working on a project that I have already established, I am guided from one form to another in an instinctive but not random way. This is how I end up creating a work (in this case a sculpture) that starts with an idea and ends up comprising a set of my attitudes and feelings that I then try to convey to my interlocutor.The final product is an imposing and elegant object despite the choice of material, iron, colour, rust, the imperfection of the material and the welding points left in some of the works, which underline the manual work.

Mary Pola was born in 1975 in Tempio Pausania (OT). She lives and works in Foligno.

Posted on: 15 December 2021, by : Alessandro Ulleri