Stefano Marchetti: Joaillerie

Artist list

Stefano Marchetti

Time, as if it were just another precious material, seeps through the tiny eyes of the tesserae composing the jewels of Stefano Marchetti. They evoke a past of Byzantine mosaics or of magnificent Viennese Art Nouveau patterns and, paradoxically, at the same time they vividly manifest the present, which makes them resemble the pixelation of a computer-designed image. The mathematical coexistence of countless minute bits of different metals creates interwoven ornament, as a lavish pictorial texture or as a digital landscape. Contrasting with these exuberant and dense surfaces there are other works, more aerial and of a bare schematism. They remind of fine cages that seem to have been formed by the openwork of the saw. But, as sometimes  happens in Marchetti's work, appearances are deceptive and what one sees is often an optical illusion or a sophisticated geometric trick. In fact, the subtle structures that look like cages or grids are the remaining traces of an absence: an acid has been engaged in meticulously eating the zones of the piece where the metal was made with a different, less resistant alloy, and what remains is the "negative" of the jewel. Marchetti establishes a meditative relationship with the process, in which the rigorous construction of the pieces demands a suitable tempo, not to show off a technical virtuosity, but rather because it is fair and necessary, like a breath.

Mònica Gaspar