ROME – It’s called Old Lady but England has nothing to do with it. It is a Fiat 500 in Carrara marble, like an immaculate white sculpture by Bernini, made in 1: 1 scale by the young sculptor Nazareno Biondo. A work first brought out on the banks of the Po, the river that bathes the city where the queen of city cars was born from the pencil of Dante Giacosa, and now exhibited at the former Paesana theater in Turin.
The marble Cinquino is a perfect photocopy of the real one. In addition to being as big as the original, the details are amazing: the sunroof, the windshield wipers, the driver’s side mirror on its side. The idea that transpires is that of a wreck thrown on the banks of the largest river in Italy as a waste, with some dents on the marble body and without wheels, that is, resting on the rims.
“The signs of the past years are clearly visible, as evidence of the sacrifices made in those times by our loved ones and which continue to repeat themselves over time, generation after generation. Old Lady is connected to all my other works, in my sculptures there are critical readings of society and themes that are not always nice to see, there are vices, drugs, degradation “. explains the artist. “For this reason the choice of the place, so beautiful during the day but where you would never go for a walk at night”.
Born in Cafasse near Turin in 1985 and graduated from the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts, Nazareno Biondo inaugurated his studio in 2012, where objects belonging to everyday life emerge from marble: a used plaster, cigarette butts or crushed cans represented in large dimensions. After having experimented with another icon of Made in Italy, the Vespa Piaggio, he began working on the Fiat 500 by modeling a 15-ton block of marble. The work is hollow inside: by removing a door, the artist was able to enter the block of marble, empty it and create the cockpit by reproducing the interiors in an amazing way. “A lot of us were born in there, for real. I was interested in representing man through his uses, to show what the human mind can achieve ”.
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