Spodium
2026
Project developed during the workshop at Brera Academy’s plaster cast gallery with Ilaria Campioli, Giulia Parlato, Federico Clavarino
Spodium is a term that alludes to the ash or slag left over from the combustion of minerals, metals or bones, indicating the material trace of a transformation that has taken place. The plaster cast gallery, a place dedicated to conservation, appears as a space in which time is apparently suspended. The plaster sculptures, in fact, are subject to continuous transformation as they wear away, settle and reshape themselves into dust. The project focuses on this tension between preservation and metamorphosis, seeking to reactivate time within a context that tends to neutralize it.
The plaster cast and the photographic negative share the same imprint nature. Both are copies of reality, intermediate devices intended to produce a “final” form such as the definitive sculpture or positive image. But if traditionally these processes aim to fix the form, here they are challenged. The negatives used are sensitive surfaces subject to transformation and, through chemical interventions and the use of powders derived from the plaster itself, the image is altered, corroded and partially erased. The material of the sculpture intervenes directly on its representation, as if the time of the place were reactivated within the photographic process.
In a subsequent phase, the photographic negatives are rephotographed using ultraviolet light, also used in restoration processes, revealing normally imperceptible traces such as impurities, fluorescence and surface variations, bringing to light what continues to act in the image and space beyond the visible form.
