Right: Jump 2007;
below: Delicate 2010
wanted, maybe the challenge of working with something
that wasn't supposed to be changed."
Old motors, an antique punch press of steel, graphite,
sterling silver, iron filings, aluminum, bronze, tungsten:
there is an odd romance to these industrial materials
and implements, a patina of the precious, the antique.
The weight, the density and the shining or blackened
surfaces of these things appeal to me. They are solid,
shapely talismans of hard work and inventive design.
Many of the mechanical elements Provisero re-forms
and re-turns are unrecognizable to our post-industrial
eyes; in obsolescence they acquire the inscrutable aura
of high art. The formal qualities of then-useful machines
were cherished, with prescience, by artists such as
Duchamp, Boccioni and Balla. Provisero, a century later,
is certainly one of their ilk.
HYLAND
