Texts / Testi stampa

Fare scultura oggi.
Genus scultoreo, Esoscultura

Daniele Nitti Sotres

Making sculpture today.
Genus scultoreo, Esoscultura.
Today it is difficult to talk about sculpture. And I am aware that my use of the term is very strict, as by sculpture I do not mean installations or design, although all these terms seem currently to be understood as being interchangeable. Sculpture is material, or rather, the result of the relationship between the gravitational pull of the material itself and the emptiness of space. Implicit in the making of sculpture is an ancestral essence which directly links human beings to their origins, which takes humanity back to its roots, to mother earth. What has always fascinated me, and which still fascinates me today, about the work of the great masters of this art is that their sensitivity is at once such that they perceive and transmit the spirit of their times and at a deeper level point to an underlying atavistic matrix. Furthermore, I firmly believe that the “highest” forms of sculpture incorporate both these aspects, which give to the work an “atemporal” value. The challenge I took up was triggered by the desire to carry on my research, my sculptural intent, linked to ancient materials, such as iron and stone, materials that have accompanied humanity since its beginnings. What interests me in working with sculpture is to transmit the spirit of my times while not ignoring history, and project the work into the future. I want to make sculpture that is encapsulated in the present, is aware of its past and is oriented, if possible, to the future.
But sculpture above all addresses the spirit and to reach it must work through the spirit of the material used. It is not merely appearance, that is decoration. Research into sculpture develops from within and takes form. Form is the vehicle for the senses, which connect the exterior of the work with the interior of the spectator, creating a link between the sculptural “genus” and the sensitivity of whoever evokes it. The aim of sculpture is to communicate with the inner self, through its form. ‘Esoscultura’ is a term which defines a precise sculptural intention, it is the search for a plastic solution which is generated around a mass, a spirit tied to its earthly roots. Fragments of stone suspended, supported, raised or imprisoned: there is a surrounding geometry which dialogues with the void, expands in the air, on the ground, into space. Geometry as humanity’s ideal instrument, as a cognitive or reflective activity or as the projection of the limits of our thoughts or of our society. What I want is to trigger off a relationship between the fullness of matter and the emptiness of space, a arrested tension, a suspended dialogue directed towards the gaze of the observer and the inner self.

Memoria del primario

Giovanni Maria Accame

Memory of the essential.
The choice of iron and stone may seem unusual today, if the person making it is a young sculptor. But when this is a knowing and deliberate choice, it overcomes the deceptive novelties linked to the materials used. Nitti Sotres is and wants to be associated with his own era, but he is not interested in the artifice of appearing and appearances.
Aware that the essential mechanisms at work in nature and therefore in mankind, as well as in the techniques used by human beings and the most advanced technology, still conserve certain processes which have changed little over millions of years, he seeks to affirm their presence. The original sense of things is among us, is part of us and our actions; this type of reality is literally buried under the proliferation of all that is new. Nitti Sotres` sculpture appears, with its reference to the essential, as an underlying fact.
Having known the artist since he was studying at Brera, I can appreciate and testify to both his consistency concerning the themes that interest him and his continual development as a sculptor, not only on the technical front but also of his philosophy: he strives to draw out the most intimate and lasting qualities of his materials and their use. Over the years his work has become more solid and articulate. It is anchored to a surface without being limited by it, it moves in space without losing its potency. The relationship between the stone, of varying origins, and the iron structure is charged with reciprocal energy. Iron contains and elevates, shows and demonstrates the permanency of stone, stone provokes processes of construction and deconstruction, iron constructs or fragments its own presence.
If we look more carefully at Nitti Sotres` work over the last three years, it seems to me that in 2006/2007 the presence of stone, and, therefore, of the relationship to the most primary of all materials, earth, was more determining. In a certain sense his sculpture began from that core, iron at times reduced to fragments, short and disjointed segments which adhered to the stone, as if by magnetic force. It was as if, consciously or not, Nitti saw earth as the beginning of everything.
In 2007/2008 we see the presence of iron grow stronger. Stone is still central, but the surrounding structure develops with an independence that was previously inconceivable. The function of the iron structure takes on aspects that reach beyond the dialectic with the other material, even if the distance from stone presents as an echo. Iron, in fact, proceeds in constructions which prolong and repeat the first contact. As if to say: evolution does not eradicate origin.
And so we return to the beginning of this article, with one last observation suggested by Nitti`s work, the plastic representation of stone and iron is made possible by space, the primary element which allows for the construction not only of these forms, but the expansion of memory and the flow of thought and, as shown by his sculptures, which is at the same time the beginning, the place of formation and constant mutation.

Tempi di lettura (2004-2008)

Claudio Cerritelli

Reviews over time (2004-2008).
1. Daniele Nitti constructs these wire structures in which the breath of the cosmos is hidden, listening to the emptiness of space. The stones are suspended in the iron forms, as signs of an interior archaeology, primary forms imprisoned in the mysterious cage of space. The delicate balance is rendered possible by magnetic mechanisms which exist between the metal structures and his favourite materials such as granite, wood or glass, different weights which dialogue with the luminous air which wraps around each plastic entity, even the lightest.
Nitti establishes a structural constraint which the sculpture cultivates as an imaginary bond, the interior value of form, an investigation into the fundamental secrets of plastic thought.
(Sculture a Villa Braila, Lodi, 2004)

2. ‘La torre dei ricordi’ by Daniele Nitti plays on ascension, upward moving volumes which exalt the potency of the void, underlining the rhythmic movement in a rigorous crescendo of modular constructiveness. With time, the metal structure takes on the physical colour of rust, transforms the obliteration of monochrome into the fascination of a chromatic sensitivity, like a roughness on the surface that changes within the space of memory. Memories float inside the ‘tower’, like symbols of past experiences, the surviving emblems of the continual cataclysms of history. The poetry of memory becomes an essential part of the enclosed space, it plays an active part in breaking down its dimensions, as it becomes an evocation of spiritual and mental spheres, stripped of their material content. The tower is the symbolic dwelling of a consciousness that has no limits, it is where the fundamental elements of creative thought merge: metallic colour, intangible light, tactile material, the corrosion of air as a transitory trace of what has gone before.
(Sei nel parco, Suzzara, 2006)

3. ‘Echi ascensionali dal Gerundo’ are those Daniele Nitti symbolically links to the lake of the same name in that area, transforming the etymological roots of the name into the material which makes up the poetic aspect of the work, the gravel filter. On the other hand, the metal structure with black patina indicates a sort of obliteration of materic values, a way of preparing the sculpture for a dialogue with the energies in the environment, as if it were a crescendo of airy volumes. Nitti’s ‘tower’, in fact, soars aloft like a modulation of voids and hollows within its solid forms which alternate in a progressive and regular rhythm. The rigour of the geometric construction is dictated by the bringing together of light, air and rain water on the small stones arranged on the pierced metal sheet, like sedimentation from the past which transforms itself into the upward movement of the future, echoes of memory on the threshold of the present.
(Esercizi di scultura ambientale, Parco Ittico, Zelo Buon Persico, 2006).

4. In his first personal show in Milan, Daniele Nitti Sotres’ work reveals marked determination and a passion sustained by the discipline with which his constructs his sculptures that never excludes imagination or fantasy. In just a few years the young Brera student, who studied the sculptures of Chillida and Italian chillidians with enthusiasm, has moved decisively towards an appropriation that is no longer strictly literal of the creative processes involved in making sculpture. His first timid attempts in structuring form are well in the past. Today his works acquire a force which derives from the need to transform solid-geometric space in voids that evoke solids, through a constant oscillation between constructed forms and primordial matter.
This is a dialogue between the modulation of the lines drawn by the iron structure and the fragments of stone which are suspended according to a visual logic, in a contraposition that becomes the true perceived fulcrum of the sculpture. Fragmented volumes, ascending and descending rhythms, twists, knots, suspensions, divarications, grafts, these are some of the forms with which Nitti Sotres fills space through a dynamic articulation of linguistic elements. The natural stones, fragments of marble, slivers of larva, pieces of alabaster or onyx, quartzes, all come into play in the ever-changing balance of the linear forms.
These stones express moods entirely the opposite of those the young sculptor evokes in his solid, geometric, compressed, disjointed metal forms, and are captured within invented cages that evoke no reference to architectonic space.
Sculpture has no required functions to respect other than those concerning the stability of its form and movement in space, its constant challenge of the invisible. As long as it always communicates with the senses, with the perception of the spectator who attempts to fill the voids with thoughts that go well beyond what is revealed by the sculpture, which arise from the ancestral nature of its forms.
(Grossetti arte contemporanea, Milan, 2007)

5. On exploring the idea of sculpture as a measurement of space (‘Vacuometria’), Nitti Sotres uses a modular structure based on the idea of hollow cubic units (the artist’s definition), which rise up as a column creating tension on all four sides. Implicit in the control of its spatial development is the understanding that its thrust moves into the surrounding environment and that the process of measuring the forms is functional in all the infinite directions which the volumetric axis of the sculpture solicits.
While aware of the constructivist tradition and of the experiences related to the use of structured space, Nitti Sotres does not feel limited by the formal prerogative of plastic art. His strictly formal modulation is open to mutation, to the alternating positions of solid and void that project the articulation of the cubic units towards a rhythmic movement in space that makes its volumes pulsate like the irradiation of energy.
The idea behind the sculpture project for the square of Masone is a response to this need to create a dialogue between the sculptural forms and the natural surroundings of the mountain beyond the river, almost as if to encompass the presence of nature. The structural archetypes modify the atmosphere with their metallic light which becomes sharp and unchanging due to its final zinc-coating. In this way, the aesthetic tangibility of the sculpture enters the environment like an energy field which becomes a daily reference point in the collective consciousness of the urban community. Intrinsic to this sculpture is, in fact, an awareness of the social instability of the world and especially of the ever-changing states of mind of human beings, which it sustains through reflection and internal resolution of the conflicts in which they find themselves in terms of both actions and reactions.
The social dimension of the sculpture takes on, in this sense, not so much the function of reflecting external reality as the role of an aesthetic model for a quest for precarious balance, lost harmonies.
(Sculpture Project, Premio Scultura in ferro, Masone, 2008)

Ferro e pietra

Francesco Poli

Iron and stone.
The language of Nitti Sotres has reached a precise formal coherence in sculpture and follows a clear direction which is dictated by underlying research into sculpture as construction, and more precisely sculpture using the technique of soldered iron. This technique, invented by Picasso and Gonzalez at the end of the 1920s, was used after the Second World War by many sculptors, such as David Smith, Anthony Caro, and Eduardo Chillida. The latter is the most revered by Nitti Sotres.
One of the most remarkable plastic inventions of the basque artist is his work with thick elements of forged iron (square bar sections) with sectioned parts, partially disjointed and twisted to form open structures with broken movements and cursive forms.
They are sculptures which have enormous spatial tension and at the same time allow one to perceive directly and intensely the compactness and physical weight of the material. Many of these structural and expressive solutions have been intelligently assimilated by our young artist, and have been developed and interpreted by him, without taking on (for the moment) monumental challenges.
The iron constructions of Nitti Sotres are more articulate and lighter, with very free geometrical modulations and new formal slanting valencies.
His sculptures are normally small or medium sized and because of their particular shape can very often be positioned (on the ground, on pedestals, or hung on the wall) on different sides, creating plastic effects which therefore vary each time.
But the spatial construction is only one aspect of these works and not an end in itself. In fact, the bars of bent and segmented iron make up, one might say, sorts of cages inside which unpolished rough stones of various kinds and colours appear fixed, inserted and suspended.
This particular interaction between elements in bent iron and stone creates an original plastic and spatial tension (which has nothing more to do with Chillida), which manifests itself as a structure that tends to close up and not open up, and which draws one’s attention to the stone nucleus, to its weight, and to the natural form, which in turn becomes true sculpture, sculpted by nature.
The iron sculptures may, in a certain sense, be considered metal exoskeletons of the stones, and it is for this that the artist has entitled these works ‘Esosculture’.

La regola degli alberi

Lorenzo Taini

The Trees Rule.
Some ninety years ago, José Ortega y Gasset wrote that the inner world of the artist gave rise to a collision or chemical reaction between his or her own sensitivity and all the art that had been created before. The artist is not alone in the world but rather all their relationships with the world are mediated by artistic tradition.
That Daniele Nitti Sotres in his development as an artist has fused chemical reactions with that artistic tradition that Francesco Poli has correctly defined the “sculpture of welded metal”, is without doubt. There is no doubt either when he is placed among those of the constructive school, to which the concept of structure is so dear.
To confirm these apparent facts of allusion and recognition, one would only have to ask Nitti Sotres himself. Like a child who, wide-eyed, lists his favourite toys, the artist would rattle off lists that would resemble chapters from a twentieth century history of sculpture.
“I’m going to create forms that don’t exist, that would never have existed without me”, said Picasso. And we should find this interesting. Not so much what path Nitti has followed so far and where his roots lie, but rather in what direction the branches are growing, where his work is going and not where it has come from: this is what we should be interested in and what interests us.
We were at the ‘Parque della Creuta del Coll’, in the part of Barcellona that rises up towards the ‘Parco Guell’. That year we were on a Grand Tour of ‘Chillidian places’, it was our personal and heartfelt tribute to the artist who had just died. Nobody does the Grand Tour anymore. The invasion of low cost airlines and Moleskins rebelling against the memory of Chatwin has killed it. But that day in the modern urban park, as I studied ‘Euology to Water’ by Chillida, this huge suspended cement fork reflected in the water, I was gripped by a sort of romantic empathy. I remember turning towards Daniele to exchange a glance of complicity, to share my sense of joy with him, but he was no longer with us at the edge of the large pool surrounded by rocks. He had climbed up, filled with curiosity to see where the wire from which the cement fork was suspended ended up, to find out what sort of counterweights were being used to balance the whole thing and how these “anchors” were wedged into the rocky crags.
I think I understood him that day, because Nitti Sotres is a sculptor. Watching him climb up those crags of rock told me a lot more than all the times I had heard him speak of his admiration of the work of Oteiza, Chillida, Spagnulo, Mauri, Coletta and many others.
And even more than all the times that it seemed to me, rightly or wrongly, to see traces of the art of those great masters scattered through his work. His first ‘Esosculture’, those now known as ‘Studi’, were small questions that could be stood on the ground in various ways. And yet their stance reminded me of Anthony Caro’s ‘Table Pieces’, just like the linear growth of certain structures (as in ‘Esoscultura IX’ and even more in ‘Esoscultura XI’, 2007), they have always reminded me of pieces by Caro such as ‘Wander’ or ‘After Emma’. There was the same fragmented articulation of alternating planes as if in a time sequence.
In a long poem of his dedicated to the sun and earth in Mexico, Carlos Fuentes ‘stole’ a thought from Einstein. Essentially, said the scientist, geometry doesn’t exist in nature. And Mexico is proof of this, continued the poet. Perhaps because that great country is in the end like man; there’s no harshness. Geometry doesn’t exist in nature, man has always been obsessed with the idea of putting it there. Geometry and order in their anti-natural and anti-mimetic aspects are often elements of risk that distance art from nature, as Rosalind Krauss has said.
It must, therefore, be rather dangerous to decide to investigate that very space between geometry and nature. This is where I have always thought Daniele Nitti Sotres’ philosophy and work come together. His sculpture uses construction as a means with which to dialogue with the natural world. A means of relating to the element of nature, a stone discovered, imprisoned, held, raised, embraced, transformed into the core of energy of the sculpture. What happens in the ‘Esosculture’ happens in the void between this core and the surrounding space.
As Goncharov said, nature is too strong and too varied to be grasped fully; her force is immeasurable and she gives nothing of herself. She possesses powerful forces and only allows us near through our creative fantasy. Otherwise it would be too easy to be an artist.
Aware that nature cannot be grasped fully, Nitti Sotres gathers shards of the world and embeds them in an idea. The shard is by definition irregular, it is a piece that existed before the sculpture and which is captured in it, held in it.
In his more recent works, the stone leans against the iron or lets itself be penetrated by the sculpture.
Equlibrium, measure, rhythm, ascent. Daniele Nitti Sotres’ work revolves constantly around the quest for the possibility of a dialogue. A dialogue between nature and geometry, between, solid and void, between shadow and light, between material and immaterial. My thoughts turn to ‘Esoscultura VI’ (2006), a taut arc which catapults the weight of the stone it holds into the surrounding space, the weight and not the form. To ‘Esosculture XV and XIX’ (2007), in which the weight is perched precariously and magically on nothing.
It always seems as if the artist manages to make his geometric sculptures grow with the rhythms of nature, multplications and additions that are reminiscent of the science of fractals. In ‘Snodo’ and in ‘Esoscultura, Presenza’ (2007), only one piece of the sculpture is open on all sides and creates no angles. This is enough to make us think, however, that there is an angle, that the structure flows through into another space that we can’t see, following ‘the tree rule’, which dictates there should be as much underneath as above. In 2007 we see one of the major turning points in his composition: that which follows on or derives from ‘Snodo’. He begins studies on the cube that lead Nitti Sotres to new rhythms in space. That which seems difficult to explain is clarified on observing ‘Colonna aperta’ (2007), when our glance fixes on that portion of the ‘removed void’ that lies where the stone is. ‘Esosculture Parietali’, all come from the same studies, all of them till ‘Cubo Schiacciato’ (2008), appeared, the name of which speaks for itself.
Alan Bennett explained his reaction to painting as a young boy by saying that he saw a sort of aura emanate from the paintings he liked. This aura made him cross a room to see a painting and, he tells us somewhat embarassed, made him want to take it home.
I don’t know whether to call it aura or not, but the space that the ‘Esosculture Parietali’ capture and free, their continual shadow play, and their deceptive, simulated lightness, give the observer the idea of a possible landscape, of a window open on the wall and in space, if not, ultimately, the idea of a glimpse of the horizon as in ‘Esoscultura Orizzontale’ (2007). Nitti Sotres says that sculpture follows the movement of ideas. I would like to ask him: “How solid is the shadow of an idea?”
‘Colonna Ascendente’ and ‘Colonna Discendente’ (2008) represent today the epitome of his ‘wall studies’. The two sculptures lean towards the observer, and once again we perceive the tree rule, but this time we can see underneath, inside, the part that doesn’t exist. The shadow play deceives us into thinking we are spying on a solid mass behind a curtain.
The structure of the column breaks up into clips of space deep inside the wall and is reflected against the wall, once again a dialogue, a mirror image, a challenge.
Saffaro describes the breaking up of the harmony of a column into fragments like crowns, more and more significant, into circular suggestions which hide the peril of prophecy.
Nitti Sotres’ series, ‘Respiri di Volterra’ (2008), transforms the dialogue between natural and unnatural by smoothing off the conflicting elements. Although gentle and soothing, the forms of the ‘Esosculture’ held the stone like a clenched fist. The metal fist that at times opens along the shards of stone and at times gently caresses it. In ‘Respiri di Volterra’, however, the stone is imprisoned, clasped in a space created for it, in a setting for which the stone has been cut. The shard of the world is dominated, tamed by the voids and the structural solids.
‘Rotante nel cubo’ (2008), (a small ‘Esoscultura’ entirely zinc-coated), and all the works in which Nitti Sotres experiments with polychrome tend towards the same direction, which looks as if it will be one of the next chapters in his work. I think of ‘Svolta nel cubo’ (2008) or of the monumental construction of ‘Dialogo. Orizzontale’ (2008), which seems to bring about the undoing of the senses.
The structures grow, gaining complexity and elegance, but they still transmit the idea of measuring the world (‘Vacuometria’), of growing and stealing the void from the solid. The scultpures of Daniele Nitti Sotres devour noise and favour silence.

Interview to Daniele Nitti Sotres