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Latte
Nero

Latte nero is an environmental installation composed of 83 parts in white terracotta that remind us of the form of the female breast,[read]though they are hollow and reveal a dark chasm. Similar but of different size, the individual parts are arranged along the wall, apparently without any order. The work’s title refers to a famous poem by Paul Celan that begins with a disturbing oxymoron: milk, the symbol of nourishment and life, is reversed into its opposite, into denial of food and therefore death. In the work by Ascari, the contrast takes the form of the opposition between the fullness, the turgor of the form, and the black void it reveals: a void that is not just subtraction, but a dizzying attraction towards the infinite.[/read]

Latte Nero. Terracotta, 84 elements variable dimensions, 2008 [S0025]