LINEA CONTINUA rings

MICRO-ARTICOLI IN FIBRA #11 | Bending metals

november 2nd, 2021

LINEA CONTINUA does not follow a specific conceptual framework, in fact it is rather a metaphor for my work. Curving metals, keeping balance between flexibility and rigidity, merging smoothness of the curve together with the severity of solid geometry. Moreover, once the ring is made I divide it again obtaining two earrings out of it. Forms that generate new forms. 

Poetry originally (poieo) means creation, an infinite gesture always beyond the limits of conventional. 

My work is an incessant challenge between mind and matter. Thought challenges the matter. Matter challenges the thought. Difficult to say. Matter is standing over and against the mind just as the real is opposed to the ideal. Not knowing the secrets of the matter one forges, means to have lost at the very beginning and forced between triviality and repetition the gesture gets entangled in endless compromises that hinder and dominate every breath of freedom. 

LINEA CONTINUA is born among brass, bronze, nickel silver wires, thin bars, tubes, aluminium and tin plates. If the metal is “work-hardened” it is rigid, difficult and if subjected to excessive tension it can break; but if crafted properly it is resistant to deformation and holds the form. 

On the other hand, ‘baked’ metal is soft, molds easily but has partially lost elastic memory and tends to deformation.

The matter is not only crafted, forged, bent, but is imagined as embodying other essences, in a horizon of possibilities that generate other forms. Curving the metal according to the insights of mind and not to the laws of matter, is the hallmark of designing. 

The curve is natural and free compared to the rectilinear sign that is artificial, just a human convention. Oscar Niemeyer writes ” It is not the right angle that attracts me, not the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve — the curve that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the body of the beloved woman”. The whole universe is made of curves, Einstein’s curved universe. 

I don’t believe thoughts and emotions ever have any rectilinear trend. Anyway, can a simple and continuous curve be enough? I’m therefore thinking of a solid that opens yet toward another dimension; a prism, to balance the curvature as a formal geometric relationship. 

MICRO-ARTICOLI IN FIBRA | pillole in fibra di logos | #11 – Manuela Gandini  

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