Filippo Sciascia
Primitive Mornings, 2019
Fossilised resin aluminium, electric cable
150 x 170 cm
Copyright The Artist
Further images
Primitive Mornings seems at first glance to be a hybrid of minimalist sculpture and light art, but carved into a piece of fossilized resin is the eponymous phrase, which reveals...
Primitive Mornings seems at first glance to be a hybrid of minimalist sculpture and light art, but carved into a piece of fossilized resin is the eponymous phrase, which reveals the conceptual underpinnings of the piece. Sciascia’s Primitive Mornings series returns to the originary moments of human evolution and cilvilization, inquiring into the symbiotic development of our technological and biological structures. (All works in the series are similarly titled.) Here, small, lighted cables have also been tied to the panel to evoke the presence of electricity. The work references the recent discovery of a strain of bacterial life, Desulfobulbaceae, living in sediment on the ocean floor, that is capable of conducting electric currents through its filament-shaped morphology. The use of ridged aluminium siding recalls the surfaces of these cable-shaped bacteria, but also alludes to the fact that aluminium, in its raw form, is found in the earth’s crust in an ore, bauxite; most bauxite deposits occur in geological strata of considerable age.