The following is an excerpt of our interview with Massimiliano Pelletti from Issue 1. For the full interview, order the issue online now.
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Madina: Your work embraces the natural imperfections of stone. Flaws, cracks, and raw textures become integral to the final piece. How do you approach these elements as part of your artistic language?
Massimiliano: What appear to be imperfections in the material are stimulating elements for me because it becomes a kind of challenge in being able to transform them into virtues in the final work. I transform adversities into opportunities; More than that, these cavities often contain crystals which, in my opinion, offer not an absence, but a presence.
I like to bring my passions into the work, and one of them is definitely geology. I really love the geological history of matter—there are already stories within it—and that is why I choose onyx, sodalite...
The following is an excerpt of our interview with Massimiliano Pelletti from Issue 1. For the full interview, order the issue online now.
—
Madina: Your work embraces the natural imperfections of stone. Flaws, cracks, and raw textures become integral to the final piece. How do you approach these elements as part of your artistic language?
Massimiliano: What appear to be imperfections in the material are stimulating elements for me because it becomes a kind of challenge in being able to transform them into virtues in the final work. I transform adversities into opportunities; More than that, these cavities often contain crystals which, in my opinion, offer not an absence, but a presence.
I like to bring my passions into the work, and one of them is definitely geology. I really love the geological history of matter—there are already stories within it—and that is why I choose onyx, sodalite or fossil stones. And I’m always looking for materials that can convey something.
Silver cave, 2023, travertine silver. Edition 1/1. Photo by Nicola Gnesi.Ercole, 2024, onyx and breccia medicea. Edition 1/1. Photo by Nicola Gnesi. Courtesy of Bowman Sculpture, London.
Sculpture, in many ways, is a performance between the artist and the material. A constant physical dialogue shaped by time, resistance and technique. Do you see it this way?
The materials I choose have very particular characteristics, and the end result is always a mediation between what I would like to do and what the material allows, or suggests, to me. So the stone plays a co-authoring role.
At what point in the sculpting process do you consider a piece complete?
I consider the work finished when I see that subject and material reach a balance, but above all I look for the sculpture to have a poetry and an energy of its own.
You have a background in philosophy—how does this intellectual foundation inform your artistic practice and your way of engaging with the world?
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Photograph by Erich Höhne. Courtesy of Deutsche Fotothek.
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Franco Maria Ricci in 1984, at the launch of FMR U.S.A. at the New York Public Library.
Caverns were probably the first labyrinthine structures human beings came into contact with, in a distant past. And I, too, rummaged through my own past, finding a version of myself as the guise of a young amateur speleologist, equipped with the right clothes, flashlights, ropes, and climbing-irons. I was a second-year student at the Faculty of Geology and, with some friends, I had founded a so-called Cavern Society. My weekdays moved along on the surface, in the sunlight, while my weekends were usually devoted to the dark bowels of the earth. Text by fmr. Read More
