Nelson Mandela Sculpture By Marco Cianfanelli

For him, the idea of ‘place’ refers beyond fixed geographical co-ordinates. It is an emissary from the past as well as a construction-site of invention and re-invention. Place, or its absence, points to our intellectual and emotional desires for location, which are as much about the construction of Self as they are about a sense of community or even nationality.
In Cianfanelli’s forms one becomes aware of images and shapes that are, in a sense, made apparent through omission. Aspects of the object may not be entirely visible. Parts may be hidden or simply missing. Sometimes it is as if the works are remainders of images that used to be or images that have been replaced, obscured or erased. Cianfanelli is drawn to the expressive possibilities of blank space, and the aesthetic patterns that result from obscuration and omission. Yet his work has little to do with the pursuit of purely formal abstraction. The images or references within the artworks are quite specific, even though they have been visually obscured or omitted.
Scale is pivotal. By reinterpreting numbers and playing with measurements, Cianfanelli repeatedly interrogates the mysterious connectivity between microbes and planets.
From the smallest maquette to the immensity of a fully realised public sculpture, his figures and forms allude ambiguously to landscape, the human body and microorganisms. His spheroid sculptures, in particular, refer simultaneously to microscopic, visceral and celestial forms. Our desire to grasp our own humanity is precariously formed from an engagement between our sense of individuality and our location within a greater species, on a singular planetary body.