There is a lot of Sardinia in the works of Stefano Soddu , the artist who is currently exhibiting in Milan, at the Francesco Messina Studio Museum , with the exhibition " Geometrie del ferro ", curated by Maria Fratelli (open until 12 June at the studio museum Francesco Messina, free admission): 24 works created between 1999 and 2019 that unfold along the temporal path of these twenty years in which Soddu has worked not only iron but also other materials such as powders.
Born in Cagliari in 1946, he moved to Milan when he was 10 : "My father was an engineer - he explains to L'Unione Sarda - and before the war he was in the Falck steelworks, then he returned to Cagliari and in 1956 he was recalled to Milan to the Breda steelworks. Me, my two brothers and my parents then returned to Lombardy, but we still have a grandparents' family home in Serramanna ”.
Ductile, easily available, iron is one of the most common elements on Earth, but Soddu - present in 52 museums and public collections in Italy and abroad - chooses to combine it with concepts close to the spirit, in some way elevating its substance. This is the case of "Rays of the soul", a work made up of discs that with their shape, the circle, represent perfection, and a cut that instead suggests imperfection, "like us humans, who are not perfect" . The irons are suspended on the wall and behind the circles develops a colored halo that expands beyond the perimeter: "Like the spirit, which does not stop behind an iron barrier, does not allow itself to be caged, but seeks its own space".
You are looking for but not only: squares, rectangles, triangles too: do they symbolize something in particular?
“Square, circle and triangle are the symbols of the Universe, in the East they say of Sengai, then also taken up by Western culture in the study of fractals in which it is said that the whole Universe can be composed of these three figures. My way of acting on iron is to go to simple geometries by proposing breaks or interventions that destabilize the geometries themselves and give a different meaning. For example in the circular plates: perfection and then the imperfect cut, and finally the color reflected in the form of powder ".
How did you approach sculpture?
“For me it has always existed, I worked in a material way even when I was painting, the first sculptural works were in the mid-seventies. Painting was never my forte, I hated painting with oil because we had to wait too long, there were no acrylics at the time. Instead, I want immediacy and I preferred to play with materials ".
Are artists born or made?
“We are born a little, art has always been my passion. There are suggestions that come from childhood and then remain forever within us ".
What were they for you?
“Sardinia: it is the mother. Its rocks, its sea, its beauties, its smells and colors, the wind, the sun, the reflections of the light have been essential in my life, even the inner one ".
What are the characteristics that fascinate you about iron?
“Iron appeared after I worked a lot with wood. It is ductile, it allows shapes that would otherwise be difficult to obtain and that are made in the laboratory or in the workshop to work on thicknesses ".
Only good points? No flaws?
“I only see one: the heaviness”.
Does iron have a soul?
“It is an inert material, the sense of the soul comes with the intervention of man, it is he who creates the essence with his idea and his talent. Talent that one has the duty to show to others, not out of self-centeredness but to make the society in which one live grow. Everyone has their own talent, this seems unquestionable to me ”.
What are the materials and colors that recall your land of origin?
“Golden, coral sands, the iron powders that come out of the Sulcis mines where my father took me on a Sunday trip. He ran a small foundry and went to recover material, bringing us children as well. One of the strongest suggestions was to stand on the stage of the steel furnace and watch the liquid iron flows. So, in short, I say it with a smile, there was no accident prevention sensitivity of today and my brothers and I were able to see that truly impactful show ".
In Sardinia the wind alone creates incredible sculptures, admired and photographed.
“The mistral above all, the granite rocks corroded by sand and wind take on fantastic shapes but the wind in particular makes the sand lift off the beaches and makes them like virgin areas, removing all human footprints. If you are lucky enough to arrive after a windy day, you can walk on the beach living a beautiful and mystical experience ".
Where do you start from to create your work?
"I don't have the thought of creating a new thing, I see an object that hits me on the street or in the countryside and suddenly something snaps to me, I usually mark it and try to find from that possibility a realization both material and form and referable to something spiritual or cultural and I try to concretize it peremptorily in an object ".
"Shroud", for example, is a historical-religious reference but has chosen a material that is not considered noble, precisely iron.
“I guess even the rough canvas of Christ's body wasn't particularly noble. In that work there is a presence that emerges, imprinted in this metal that reminds me of the speech of the shroud as the ability of man to leave an imprint of himself in the world ".
What does “wet bench” instead represent?
“It was born almost as a joke: in 1999 I was invited to an exhibition on the benches, it was summer, 'under the sun - I said to myself - it would be too hot, let's do a work that can cool'. I am ironic a little but there is something real, in fact it is made up of a series of cells made with iron washers brutalized on the surface to give the sense of man's strength, and then water is added ".
Any other work that you are particularly fond of?
“There is a fairly recent one, which I have exposed, and which anticipates the events of these times of war between Russia and Ukraine. There are 10 triangles that I called 'Horizontal path', but the original name was 'Borders': they have edges worked with plasma therefore very jagged, hard, they have the tip pointing upwards, consequently dangerous, a sort of weapon. Borders are always dangerous and suffered, never defined and definitive ".
Do your creations have an explicit message or can everyone see different things in it?
"The message is what I tried to give, but not everyone sees the same thing, and this is good, when the works are detached from those who created them, they live a life of their own, maybe they find messages that I didn't explicitly want. . I have never liked to give 'titles' but they have always asked me to put them, often they are born along the way ".
So each person has his own vision.
"Those who look at a work of art have their own culture, a background, and even in the art world will have seen works in churches at least, so normally if the work on display has something latent in itself, who the watch hooks on to that part and then builds something of its own. If there is too much latency, the observer thinks 'I've already seen this', if there is little it remains incomprehensible, the balance is the right point of latency and innovation ”.
Is the artist the first critic of himself or does he see what he always does perfect?
“The first critic is the wife. No, I'm kidding. I never finish the job right away, I leave the works without a title and without a signature, often there is some change that takes place later and that makes everything more balanced ”.
What did he leave you inside Sardinia?
“I say that I love arriving by ship because I enjoy the air that enters the nostrils upon entering the port. The fact that it is an island is a problem for many reasons but it also represents an incredible charm. It always gives me emotion when I think about it. I understand Campidanese perfectly, I try to speak it with few results because I don't remember many words, but I feel Sardinia in my DNA, there is also a book of mine published with a title made up of an invented word ".
Which?
“Perdamarebentu, or stone sea wind: it is the story of a journey along the coasts made with a photographer friend. In short, a suggestion, a suggestion called Sardinia ".