Torso 2000

Ettore Spalletti made this ‘Torso’ in no particular year with who knows what. I feel it’s important to start with what you see, and how the artist leads you to see it, or maybe even how they don’t. Spalletti's approach to form is deceptively simple. The blackness of the piece is so absolute, it’s like he's daring you to find a single variation in tone, and yet there are subtle gradations, a certain reflectivity, a play with light that teases you with the possibility of depth. Notice the way the light catches the edges, defining the planes with stark contrast. The sleekness of the surface almost obscures the physicality of the object, it becomes less about the material and more about the idea of form itself. There’s a stillness to this object, a kind of meditative quality. Like a Donald Judd sculpture, maybe, something that challenges you to find meaning in its minimalist perfection. It’s this tension between the concrete and the abstract that really gets to me, and this is what makes the work resonate long after you’ve left the gallery.