Project n. 299, 2017. Photomontage. Fabbriche Chiaramontane, Agrigento
Paolo Scirpa features in a highly unusual adventure: the combination of a light-emitting structure that was designed and built to be a mental construction, while also becoming part of the natural and monumental environment, a frame for our everyday life. Scirpa’s language is the language of geometrical design projected onto light, neon light, a phenomenon based on linearity of structure and of the effect of the corresponding perspective […] At the famous location of Archimedes’ tomb in Sicily, Scirpa presents a highly succinct design proposal: sights for a target set into the rock, creating a sort of heart, lung, a transcendental vision of objective reality. The square-shaped perspective construction (layers of tubes, lines, holes and spaces) is set into the stone under the pediment of the monument, like a relief cut out of the rock and becoming part of it. […]. The beauty of this operation on a natural location, that had already been modified by man many centuries ago, lies in the continuity of the structural approach. The geometrical discipline of Scirpa’s project becomes part of the Ancient Greek monument with perfect continuity, and likewise it shares the approach of his forefathers from Magna Grecia […]. Scirpa, a calligrapher of electric light, […] shows us beauty in even greater beauty, and he does so with all the energy of his personality, his sensitivity and culture […].
Pierre Restany, Milan, 1986
[…] The design for the Greek theatre was created with the objective of enhancing the purity of forms of a sequence of progressively-interlinked semicircles radiating from the stage, or that, in the other direction, move towards a greater “concentration.” Scirpa places his circular structure at the centre of the stage, in order to perpetuate the funnel shape in a virtual sense. This work seems to provide an almost tautological confirmation of the fact that the performance remains the same, however many dramas have been enacted in the past and however many there will be in the future. In addition, the artist created a 1:10 scale model of the work based on the Greek theatre, which constitutes an independent work with its own meaning independent of the context.
Francesco Poli, Milan, 1997
