Forges Davanzati has been working for some time on sculpture inspired primarily by the world of insects, translating them into stainless steel.
Thus are born his threadlike creatures, delicately balanced on their legs or suspended in space.
The geometric forms are reduced to the essential, devoid of any superfluous markings or ornamentation, yet they remain capable of their own subtle, amused lyricism.
Forges Davanzati’s, in short, is not an aseptic laboratory geometry, but an evocative geometry, charged with the memory of a silently enigmatic, silently knowing nature.
In these small silver objects, in particular, the insects have become larvae.
They are now miniatures. But their naturalistic, Flemish precision, instead of making them more obvious, makes them more elusive. Perhaps more insidious.
Morandi argued that there is nothing more abstract than the real. And after all, larva in Latin also means “spectre, mask.”
The chrysalis of the lepidopteran, the nymph of cichlindelid, calliphorid and tricopteran, the pupa of hoverfly, cerambid and culicide, the free nymph of hymenoptera, the otters ants of the desert, fixed forever in the light, tell us of life forms that generally elude our knowledge. And they remind us of Shakespeare’s phrase: that there are more things in heaven and earth than are known to our philosophy.
Elena Pontiggia