Bruno Gambone

This elegant little exhibition dedicated to the sculptures of Bruno Gambone was part of the close up series.
One of the greatest contemporary potters, the exhibition presented eight works dating from the 1980s to the beginning of the 2000s. The clay maintains the earth’s original features: with rough, coarse surfaces, imperfect shapes and an archaic hardness, few tones of earthy colour, and few etchings, dug out like a furrow. All of a touching simplicity, as only a primitive form in its raw freshness can be. In Gambone there is nothing raw as such, but, despite his talent, he has had the strength and ability to distance himself from this rich and detailed world steeped in the most refined of products and its tradition to seek his own language, in tune with the present. From this material he extracts a primordial energy, in his tendency to make basic shapes, containing unexpected gaps and revealing wholly violent or delicately shaped additions. Made so vibratile, and stripped of any frills, he restores the tangibility of the clay itself to the matter. While seeking its innermost essence, Gambone rediscovers its intrinsic value, taking the matter back towards its original concreteness.