Scuola di modellato

Scuola di modellato [School of Shaping] is a wall installation of 24 copies of positive casts of amputated legs, originally used for the preparation of prosthesis.

About Scuola di modellato

One evening in April 2003, I received a phone call from a friend from Turin – her husband, while throwing away the rubbish, had come across a pile of strange objects, which appeared to be made of wax and reproduced anatomical parts. I asked her to recover as many objects as possible, which later turned out to be casts of legs that had undergone amputation. These casts were used to make and adjust the prostheses that would replace a missing limb. These objects all dated back to the eighties, so they no longer had any use and could be destroyed. The process with which they were created was similar to that used in casting, reminding me of the years I spent with the the clay tubs in the basement of the old Primo Liceo Artistico in Turin. Their shape spoke of human anatomy, but in a subtle way, as if they were the product of continuous variation. After having emptied them of the foam which was intended to make them more rigid and resistant, I decided to arrange them on the wall in a regular grid.

© Cristiano Berti

2024

In Scuola di modellato Berti makes a central aspect of his work fully visible: the circumstantial mode, the inspection register, the rough re-construction of events and identities based on the last material elements that still provide possible traceability. Who did the limbs of those moulds belong to then? The artist is not as interested in answering this question, as much as returning to reality for one last time, bringing back signs and sediments to the forefront that have not altogether disappeared. The research remains unfinished, the mystery is confirmed as such and no answers or final solutions are given. In fact, Berti does not wish to complete the philological reconstruction of his findings, but only uncover removed portions of reality, place it in the forefront through his invincible scraps, through his temporal, material, metaphysical shifting.

© Luigi Fassi

excerpt from «The Vertigo of Reality », in Cristiano Berti. Vertigine del Reale/Vertigo of Reality, exhibition catalogue, Turin: Allemandi (ISBN 978-88-422-2104-3), 2012, pp. 152

You can, in fact, find in Berti a kind of insisting on what is unusual, unexpected, upsetting. It’s a transversal glance the artist directs on the everyday reality that each one can recognize. It is the case of Scuola di Modellato, an installation made of 24 copies of positive casts of legs. The artist got these resin objects, of the eighties, after discarding by an ortopedic laboratory. Useful objects, certainly not for art use, which are taken and put on a wall. A conceptual more than physical operation, which, while depriving the object of its real function, modifies its meaning. In fact, the artist goes back to the classic tradition, exposing the casts hung on the wall, making so possible the observation. It becomes then intentional the direct referring to the academy Galleries of plaster casts or, as said in the title, to the Schools of shaping, given the naturalism of the objects, necessarily and completely similar to the human limbs. Berti, while systematically drawing them near, allows us to note the similarities and the differences, establishing a classifying process. It’s a procedure that, in a way, refers also to the first museum collection, the “Wunderkammer” which were spread between the XVI and XVIII centuries, where various objects were collected, the curious, the rare and the precious ones, in order to represent the whole world. This installation has a similar intention, where an incurable contrast between a static observation of the objects, to study and understand them, and their singleness is created. The singleness which, in this specific case, is concerning casts made after amputations.

© Cristina Petrelli

excerpt from «Cristiano Berti: Nothing is Too Strange to be True», in Niente è troppo strano per essere vero, exhibition flyer, Macerata: Fuorizona Artecontemporanea, 2007