Marco Gobbi

In his book Watermark (Fondamenta degli Incurabili), Brodskij compares the water and the erosions caused by its motion on some facades of buildings in Venice to the lace,  like “the most beautiful drawing that the time — alias — water has left on earth, in any part of the globe”.

Departing from this assumption the trace of the water is therefore visible on the facade of the buildings as abstract forms that are unraveled in a thread of time whose weft remember the lace. Venice has historically been between the principal manufacturing cities of lace  since the XV century, and its commerce is attested beginning from the 1536. The work  blend together  in one sculpture two different forms of time: on the one hand the effects of the erosion on the other  the slow constant work of the craftsmanship of the laces.

Through the technique of the frottage I have transferred some fragment of walls of Venice on paper and subsequently translated the sketches with the technique of the lace to point in air typical of the island of Burano.The Laces made  by me after having learned its technique from some artisan Buranelle , have been made using three among the typical points: the Sacolà, the Greek from two and the point Burano, for the subdivision of the lace according to the depth of the various parts of the wall analyzed. 

The choice of the walls to be transposed in laces has been done following the flow of the water that from the inside of the city  bring toward the outside of the lagoon.

The vases in glass with colored sands contain iconography  representations of the myth of Atlantide. The subjects  have been taken by the dialogues of Plato: Timeo and Crizia are made with a technique usually used in the seaside resorts for the realization of souvenir. This second work is connected with the nature of the city, to being built on the water and to be  in constant danger of it, at the mercy of the factor that makes this city  meantime the only one. Another form of temporality and erosion whose comparison with Atlantide want to be just  another point of view/ reading of the concept of time.