Massimo Bartolini

Bartolini has created a work specially for the S.M.A.K., ‘Otra Fiesta’ (2013), an organ several metres high made of metal scaffolding pipes. ‘Otra Fiesta’ works like a barrel organ that plays automatically: the air blown through the pipes first passes through the holes in the music roll, giving rise to variations in tone and length. For the S.M.A.K. version, the free jazz musician Edoardo Marraffa has written a new composition. The jazz singer Deirdre Dubois sang lyrics by the Argentine poet Roberto Juarroz to this music. Bartolini sees the ‘void’ in Juarroz’ poem and the void that the metal scaffolding visualises as a metaphor for the present state of architecture.

The object sculptures and two-dimensional works on show next to ‘Otra Fiesta’ took shape in the sheltered setting of the studio over the last ten years. The ‘studio matters’ in the title refer to these small objects: ‘studio matters’ means both ‘studio materials’ and ‘the studio is important’. There are ink drawings, collages of found objects and prints that have suffered some damage, but there is also a judo belt stretched between the floor and ceiling, an irregularly-shaped stone balancing on a pearl and enlarged apricot stones in alabaster. They are exercises in the sculptor’s craft that offer an insight into the poetic world of Bartolini’s imagination.