In his contemporary sculpture, Italian artist Mattia Bosco seeks to create a synthesis between concept and form. The two combine with balance and harmony, bringing his unique, abstract stone sculptures to life.
From philosophy to sculpture
Mattia Bosco was born in Milan in 1976, into a family of artists. His father is a painter and his mother, an art restorer, taught him the gold leaf gilding technique, among others. Classical studies, in particular in the area of philosophy, led him to develop his own personal reflections with regard to artistic creativity and aesthetics. Upon completing his studies, he set himself up in a former artist’s studio in Milan, where he began working intensively in ceramic, the only material with which he was familiar at the time. He recounts: “I would say that no-one taught me to work in ceramic, but neither did I learn all by myself; it was the material itself that taught me how it wanted to be worked”.
However, sculpture in stone soon took the place of ceramic in his endeavours. While clay “welcomed” every gesture made by the artist, in a thoroughly permeable and passive manner, stone offered a form of resistance, “responding” to the sculptor’s every stroke, allowing him to initiate a genuine, formal dialogue with the material. It is thanks to this potential that lies within stone that the artist has come to understand the inseparability of form and material. In closely examining the stone, he realises that it is a potential sculpture, always leaning towards a certain form.
“Sculpture [in stone] follows form, in just the same way as plants follow the light. Plants sense the light; they do not create it: they recognise it and feed on it. And just as plants do not invent the light, the sculptor does not invent form; he finds it in objects and continues its process of formation.”