Fragile Fanzago
Installation: bandages, rope, metronomes, plaster capital, on construction scaffolding structure
Year: 2003
Year: 2003
Fragile Fanzago was a site-specific installation created during the VIII edition of Maggio dei Monumenti at the 17th-century Palazzo Maddaloni in Naples. It activated a massive scaffold beneath the frescoed vault of the entrance hall. Suspended between ground level and an unreachable “above,” it was visible from a single viewpoint: a small square window on the second floor offering the only vantage to see the work whole.
On this aerial stage, a life-sized, ghostly white human figure modeled in plaster bandages sits in despair, hands covering the face. A rope with a noose around its neck ties to a fragment of capital, ominously poised to fall like a boulder. Behind it, the word Fragile is scrawled on cardboard, while three metronomes placed in a triangle mercilessly mark the passage of time.
Dedicated to Cosimo Fanzago—the Baroque architect-sculptor whose architecture appears powerless against time, looting, and frenetic reality—the installation embodies a suspended, dramatic, and silent state: an imminent but unfulfilled extreme gesture. Time flows inexorably, balanced between life and death.
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