Guided tours of Arnaldo Pomodoro's labyrinth inspired by history's first epic poem

Entrance into the Labyrinth is anenvironmental installation of about 170 square meters created by Arnaldo Pomodoro over sixteen years, from 1995 to 2011, as a synthesis of his production. Located in the underground spaces of the former Riva Calzoni, the Labyrinth, now a Fendi showroom, is a place intended to explore the metaphors of the human experience: to enter it is in fact to take a magical and mysterious journey through the artist’s mind, amid reworkings of already known sculptures and forms still in the process of becoming.

The setting is inspired by theEpic of Gilgamesh, the first epic poem in history, engraved on twelve clay tablets in cuneiform characters. “I have always been fascinated by all signs, especially archaic ones. Even writing has attracted me, from the primordial signs in caves, to the tablets of the Hittites and Sumerians, so much so that I dedicated one of my works, Entrance into the Labyrinth, to Gilgamesh, which is the first (c. 2000 B.C.) great poetic and allegorical text about human experience. The imprints that I dig, irregular and dense, in the artistic material, the wedges, the piercings, the threads, the tears, come to me initially from certain archaic civilizations,” Pomodoro recounted.

The installation refers to the theme of travel and the labyrinth as a metaphor for life and is intended to be a tribute to writing and communication. From the magmatic surface, made of opaque fiberglass and treated with patinated copper leaves, emerge u signs of a primitive form of writing, marked vertically by the polished shoulders of the labyrinth’s access door, which rotates on its hinge to reveal another space, unknown and hidden from view.

Arnaldo Pomodoro describes the Labyrinth thus, “There is a place - oriric, ineffable - that we all know, we all experience: it is the archetype of the labyrinth that refers us to the eternal challenge of the secret of life and that over the millennia has been manifested in myth and the arts. My Entrance to the Labyrinth is an invitation into the meanderings of a path, where time is transformed into space and space in turn becomes time. A reflection on all my work: the gesture of reappropriation and recovery of an artistic activity that has spanned the decades of my life and constitutes a kind of synthesis of it. Because the labyrinth cannot but be traversed, in its very unraveling dark engine of every human experience that always takes place between spurts and impasses, stops and restarts: in its progress toward a maturity that is a return to the origin and its uncertainty. For I believe, as Bruno Schulz wrote, that ’maturing toward childhood would be authentic maturity.’”

The Pomodoro Foundation is organizing guided tours of the master’s great work Entrance into the Labyrinth: more than 30 appointments, from July 17 to September 11, 2021, offering tours designed for different audiences, from children to adults, to discover a place where art and introspection intertwine.

Guided tours for ages 12 to 99 will last 45 minutes. Full price 11 euros, reduced 8 euros.
In July, they will be held at 6:30 p.m. on July 20, 22, 23, 27, 29, 30 (July 22 and 29 also at 7:30 p.m.), while in September they will be held on July 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 at 6:30 p.m. (July 2 also at 7:30 p.m. and July 4 and 11 also at 11:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m., 5:30 p.m.).

Guided tours for children ages 5 to 11 (accompanied by a participating adult) will last one hour and will be held on Sept. 4 and 11 at 10:30 a.m., 3:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m.

For info and reservations: https://www.fondazionearnaldopomodoro.it/prodotto/il-labirinto-visita/

Image: Arnaldo Pomodoro, Entrance into the Labyrinth (1995-2011; installation). Ph.Credit Dario Tettamanzi. Courtesy Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation.

Guided tours of Arnaldo Pomodoro's labyrinth inspired by history's first epic poem

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