Mimed Sculptures – Davide Balula

A series of pink gloves focuses the spectators’ attention on seven pedestals with no sculptures. The gloves are worn by a team of performers who accurately describe the invisible shapes and let us perceive a specific image: a sculpture that is already part of our memory and emerges little by little in our mind.

Mimed Sculptures is the result of an interaction between the act of the body and the visual perception of the form, which highlights a series of inputs that sum up a sufficient amount of information to complete seven iconic sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, Alberto Giacometti, Eva Hesse, Tony Smith, Barbara Hepworth, David Smith, and Henry Moore. I was amazed by the attention that was dedicated in particular to Alberto Giacometti’s Le Nez: in order to convey the volume and the tactility of that nose it was necessary to reshape the matter, therefore the bronze seemed vital and fluid again, at one’s disposal to be manipulated and carved in a mental image. And there was even a final touch on the point of the nose, an act that most of us would secretly love to do.

Lia Ronchi

Davide Balula, Mimed Sculptures, ArtBasel, 2016.

© Davide Balula 2016