Soaring Architectural Sculpture Recalls a Long Lost Holy Place

An astounding display of the volume and spatial relations defined by the built environment is now rising in Siponto, Italy thanks to the imagination of street artist/public artist Edoardo Tesoldi, and thousands of cubic feet of wire.

“I imagined being able to draw in the air, while keeping a direct relationships with the context,” says Edoardo Tresoldi, the artist of this ethereal holy host. On this soil and in this context the sculpture is an epic interpretation of an early Christian church that at one time rose from this site not far from the ocean in Southern Italy.

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

Like an anthropod that has left its skin, the church is no longer here, but the exact replica, an exoskeleton that commands space stands hollow. The scale reminds you of the power the building and the institution had, the wind reminds you of its lack of staying power. The overall effect is as classical in its detail as it is post-modern in its digital-blur ephemerality.

Working in concert with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Archaeology Superintendence of Puglia, ancient meets contemporary here and actually gives us pause to think of the relative meaning historically assigned to massively impressive architecture that one day soon may be recreated by pressing “print” on your enormous 3-D printer.

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

Curator Simone Pallotta speaks of this work by Tresoldi as “majestic”. He says that the axiometric installation, which continously changes as you walk around and through it, is “able to tell the volumes of existing early Christian Church and at the same time is able to vivify, updating it, the relationship between the ancient and the contemporary.” This is “a work that, breaking up the secular controversy of the arts primacy, summarizes two complementary languages ​​into a single, breathtaking scenery,” and you will agree with his observations.

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

Departing from the pure aesthetics here, one wonders if this translucent work doesn’t also vilify the institutional Church for its daunting network of massive edifices that rise to the skies but do not rise to the occasion of serving the needs of the increasing number of poor who are desperate to be housed, clothed, fed. Interestingly, a couple of wire human forms are included in this installation, presumably to show scale, and they are ghost-like, unmoving.

A mirage of architecture and architectural history, the computer-modeling aspect of the experience makes it seem like the viewer is interacting with a hologram. Reduced to its elemental geometry the new sculpture could be interpreted as a fitting critique of the hollow  institutions that set themselves quite apart from the people, behind majestic walls.

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

Edoardo Tresoldi (photo © @theblindeyefactory)

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post