20
08

Odradek

Odradek is composed of many parts: small ones, in red terracotta, that remind us of something that we cannot say, perhaps a top, something that seems to have lost its function.[read]The title, not coincidentally, refers to a famous short story by Kafka that has to do with a forgotten object said to be extraordinarily mobile; it eludes the grasp, its form seems senseless, yet complete in its own way. Like Kafka’s Odradek, each part of this installation can roll, producing a subtle sound “like the voice of one who is without lungs.” Odradek, like Insiemi instabili, Fiori and Vayu, belongs to a group of works in which the multiplicity of parts “lacking a clear, recognizable order — as the artist says — seems to respond to a pure need for growth; almost as if they were following their own secret impulses, expanding in the direction of least resistance.” The form — the infinite, varied forms through which life manifests itself — is the result of this impulse that knows no calm, driven by an overwhelming generative will that seems to have no goal other than reproduction.[/read]

Odradek. Terracotta, 235 elements, variable dimensions, 2008 [S0026]