Fabrizio Prevedello and his "Classica": dancing sculpture on display in Sarzana

Through Feb. 16, 2025, Cardelli & Fontana Gallery in Sarzana is hosting Classica, the fifth solo gallery exhibition by Fabrizio Prevedello (Padua, 1972), curated by Saverio Verini. The artist presents a new cycle of works that explore the boundary between sculpture and performance, inaugurating a new creative dimension.

Classica was born from a simple yet extraordinary gesture: a dance. Prevedello embraced a large sculpture-compass, furrowing bitumen surfaces with steps that left white traces on a black background. This physical dialogue between artist and work resulted in abstract, fragile yet powerful signs that expand the sculptural language toward a form of performance painting.

The title of the exhibition refers precisely to this fusion of disciplines: the movement of the body and the construction of form meet, giving rise to a cycle of works that, while remaining faithful to Prevedello’s poetics, introduce a component of action and immediacy.

The works on display

The gallery is developed in two distinct environments. In the first, the visitor is confronted with the traces of Prevedello’s creative “dance”: signs and sculpture-drawings that arise from a direct and physical relationship with the material. The initial room houses a large sculpture-compass, the starting point and symbolic focus of the exhibition. This imposing gray structure, made of raw and refined materials together, embodies Prevedello’s approach: a balance between instinct and control, between roughness and grace.

The second room, on the other hand, features works closer to the artist’s traditional language: wall sculptures that evoke the landscape of Versilia. Here, natural materials such as stones are mixed with industrial fragments, masterfully transformed into forms that manage to surprise with their delicacy.

An embrace between gesture and matter

Central to Prevedello’s reflection is the idea of trace: the compass-sculpture, in its plaster ends, not only supports the structure but also becomes a creative tool. Through movement, it leaves marks on the bitumen surfaces, in a play of rotations that tells of a romantic and at the same time carnal relationship between artist and work. This performative practice marks a new stage in Prevedello’s journey, holding firm to his focus on material but opening it up to a more direct interaction with gesture.

“The works are animated by density and lightness, agonism and lightheartedness, struggle and dance, concreteness and abstraction, stillness and movement, darkness and light,” writes curator Saverio Verini. "In the 1930s Alexander Calder, respectively inspired by Marcel Duchamp and Jean Arp, had coined the terms mobiles and stabiles to describe the two types of sculptures with which he indelibly marked the history of contemporary sculpture: the first marked by a kinetic tension, the ability to hover and be ’an extension,’ to paraphrase Arturo Martini; the second firmly planted on the ground, still conditioned by the memory of statuary and the idea of monument. Here, I have the feeling that Prevedello, with his dance, wanted to give mobility to a sculpture that is entirely stable; that he wanted to animate it, recording the consequences of this action that makes us perceive, together, fatigue and freedom, calculation and improvisation."

The Classica exhibition is on view at the Cardelli & Fontana gallery. Opening hours are Monday from 5 to 7:30 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday from 12:30 p.m. and 5 to 7:30 p.m. For more information, you can visit www.cardelliefontana.com or write to galleria@cardelliefontana.com.

Fabrizio Prevedello and his "Classica": dancing sculpture on display in Sarzana

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