Archivio Remo Salvadori

"During the process of elaboration of the work, I bore in mind the space of the Sala delle Cariatidi—which measures 40 x 15 meters—and its appearance, as it is a place that instills a certain reverence by way of its imposing and strongly characterized architecture. The location guides orientation. I felt the space to be like a piece of

clothing. Its historical nature induced me to find in the sound of the work’s title a void that becomes a star, a void that is a silent gaze close to the traces of the ruins of the room… Here the star turns into a jewel. For me, Leonardo’s words are an invitation to keep the gaze fixed in a silent mind."

"The work that Salvadori gave us in white Carrara marble in its first version is indeed a sort of compass. The fact that the figure of the star emerges in negative, in absence, or in empty space harks back to the procedure of Nel momento, with its continual division into solids and voids on the surface of the lead. And yet, even in this case the work was already there: it lived in a latent state in Salvadori’s billfold in the form of a certain number of small square pieces of white paper that, through a simple gesture and on the right occasion, could be arranged, with a certain rotation, in such a way as to make a star appear inside them. Today the paper has been turned into marble or metal, but the precariousness of the juxtaposition of its elements has been retained. . . . No’ si volta chi a stella è fisso continues to emerge and disappear, without ever exhausting its potency. . . . Its reflected light, here and now, holds the same power as that of a diamond."