Ubi Maior - Card 89
SPHERE WITHIN SPHERE
“In my work I see the cracks, the broken walls, the destructive potential that emerges from our time of disillusionment”.
So spoke Arnaldo Pomodoro, the Italian sculptor who has become very famous for his bronze Spheres, which broke down in front of the viewers’ eyes through jagged and torn sections. Pomodoro’s Spheres have always highlighted the contrast between the perfection of the smoothness of the sphere and the complexity hidden inside the work, as if it were a sort of metaphor inherent in the complexity of the unknown. The interior of the Spheres represents the true soul, which is shown to the public by making the reality visible through new forms, highlighting what is hidden and concealed.
In 1990, in the Pinecone Courtyard of the Vatican Museums, Pomodoro installed the colossal Sphere within Sphere, which immediately acquired a symbolic meaning amplified by the location of the sculpture: the installation of Pomodoro was made with the appearance of a sphere inside the sphere, which can slowly rotate on itself.
According to someone, Arnaldo Pomodoro represented in the Sphere within Sphere the contrast between inside and outside: the world in which the human being lives is a potentially destructive world, where the violence and the threat of the unknown are hidden under a surface that presents itself apparently perfect. Through an introspection that uses fractures as symbols denouncing the unimaginable fragility of matter, it is possible to bring to light the dark side and the interiority of the soul and of the world.