Pietro Scampini

Pietro's Ombre are instilled with a poetry that pays homage to the Africa discovered by the sculptor on his travels. During this time, he unearthed its secrets, learned to respect silence and listened to the rhythm of life on the African continent. They reflect an imagination that transforms metropolitan living into a place where survival depends on violating the soul. The Ombre, or shadows, allude to a presence via an absence that is both ambiguous and powerful, suspended between being and non-being. To understand all that is invisible and fathom the depths of reality, these forms must be questioned. Created in the late seventies, Scampini's Ombre are gaunt iron figures, pure and essential, mythical and ephemeral, as if to reveal the fear that the enchantment of a world may end, wounded and mortified by human error. These anthropomorphic figures are outlined by a seemingly endless line that breathes life into the taut bodies, so that they appear to be hovering instead of firmly anchored to the ground. The figures are moving, like roots in motion, a forest of souls representing the same conscience reiterated in the duplication of the bodies. Shadows of bodies in movement, each a replica of the other, pressing forward with a sense of their individual experiences, each with a history that spans the centuries and originates from that very same Africa, caught between the heavens and the earth. Despite their apparent fragility, they bear witness to a message of hope that goes straight to the heart.