‘“I would like people to know that I want expansion, democracy, madness, alchemy, craziness, rhythm, horizontality. I mean I want to be elementary, I want to commit acts of passion.” Pier Paolo Calzolari wrote the above in 1968 for his Ideal House, one of the pioneering works of Arte Povera, a movement in which the Italian artist remains a seminal figure. Calzolari regenerates the elements of his own personal syntax, and with this work he lays the groundwork for a malleable, musical formation. Lead, copper, wood, salt, frost structure and frost, ink, fire, flowers, and nuts – collected from one work to another, this vocabulary of the everyday, studded with the impalpable, is re-tuned until its poesie begins to pulsate. Reforming the sensible thresholds through which the invisible infiltrates, Calzolari makes contact with existence through its fleeting crystallizations: candle flame, breath, air, the formation of frost…. forms beyond space and time, in a category that traverses the knowable. In a contemporary world tense with something waiting to be born, Calzolari communicates with the primordial, listens to the lost voice of each thing, takes his bearings, and moves in for it.’ – Annabelle Gugnon
