Remo Salvadori

In the moment

2020

Remo Salvadori was born in Cerreto Guidi, near Florence, in 1947. Since 1973 he has lived in
Milan. His works derive from a knowledge, a mathematical discipline that he has always practiced.
The artist has established a relationship and a dialogue in particular with seven metals: lead, tin,
iron, copper, mercury, silver and gold, used as pieces to form a pentagram, the language of which
also finds correspondence in the seven musical notes. He is one of the first to practice those open
and constructive ways of art that characterise the period between the second half of the seventies
and the end of the eighties.

His message is a completely secular sacredness that affirms the positivity of existence and the
internal harmony that the "living" harmonize with the world and its substance, which is, in his
vision, together and inextricably material and spiritual. The purpose of his art is to mark nuclei of
energy in which that substance reveals itself and makes us aware of our life in the world.

The outcome of Salvadori's works is resolved in essential harmony, in proportions, in geometries
and in a deliberate and intense new metaphysical version. In Salvadori’s opinion, the work arises
from the need to find a contact, to enter into a relationship with the place where the work will be
placed. His is a subtle research, made up of almost imperceptible assonances, which still find
correspondence of signs between his sensitivity and those of the reality in which the work is
installed. For Peccioli, the artist created "In the Moment", especially conceived for the imposing
side wall of an ancient building located at the North Gate, where Corso Giacomo Matteotti begins,
the town's main artery leading to Piazza del Popolo.

In its origin, In the Moment is linked to the concept of transformation, a practice aimed at inner
evolution: “I worked by cutting the metal with a cutter as if to make it flourish”. The work has
dimensions that can vary, as well as the material it is made of (for Peccioli it is a specimen
composed of a lead element of 2m by 2m plus a gold element of 2m by 2m, two metals, lead and
gold, never matched before by the artist), and it develops from a preliminary grid drawn on a plate,
which outlines a pattern formed by a series of geometric figures such as the triangle, the square and
the rhombus. Afterwards, these shapes are cut and folded manually so that a structure is created in
which the solids are opposed to the voids, the areas in light alternate with those in shadow and the
heaviness of the lead contrasts with the lightness of the void. The composition of In the Moment
requires a series of gestures, such as cutting and bending metal, which must be repeated
methodically and in a precise sequence. This action provides for a temporality that becomes an
intrinsic part of the work. The time taken to get to the final definition of In the Moment and the
repetition imply a ritual, that process, by which the artist becomes the creator, "in the moment", of
the work to be. In Salvadori's hands, the metal plate is continuously worked in an action that
involves several steps: "right-left, upside-down", in which "there is always a rotation". A delicate
operation that requires patience and concentration and that ends only when, by bending and cutting,
you get to the point where "there cannot be more than one amount of cutting, more than one amount
of bending".

For Salvadori, art is a communion of opposites. The works are based on the conceptual and formal
dialectic between inside and outside, uniqueness and multiplicity, spirituality and matter. In many
sculptures and installations geometric shapes interpreted as symbols recur: as in this case the
square, indicating the terrestrial dimension, opposed to the circle, metaphor of celestial geometries.