Faust Cardinali
Botellum, 2009-2022
Pure silver 999, 925 silver, ruthenium, magnetic necklace
18 x 16.5 x 3 cm
Edition 14 of 30
Numbered and signed
In 2009, Faust designed Botellum necklace, inspired by the renowned Mazzocchio hats. Mazzocchio are said to derive from supports for headgear worn in Renaissance Italy during the 15th century. They also have been featured as a demonstration of the technical prowess of the artist to show off their ability to render perspective convincingly. Painted by Paolo Uccello, drawn by Leonardo da Vinci and incorporated into intarsia and prints through the 16th century. The early Italian Renaissance polymath Piero della Francesca discussed and illustrated the construction of the mazzocchio in his treatise on perspective De Prospectiva Pingendi.
From the study of the “mazzocchio” and its complexity, Cardinali’s idea was born of conceiving a “non-geometric” necklace that reinterprets the mathematical scheme to transform it into an organic shape, a sort of snake, drawn on the internal curves of the human body, which represented in summary and in an ornamental way this historical period of psychological contraction and at the same time of poetic liberation.
He focuses on the themes of liquidity, of the fluidity of matter, of the violence of existence in relation to the lightness of the soul. The soul is reflected in the materials used – both poor and precious, often combined with polyvinyl which the artist defines as a “pictorial skin”. Cardinali combines harmoniously and expressively materials like aluminium that he carves using a self-invented technique with gold, silver, precious stones and everyday materials like burned bread that he transforms into fossils. The result are small wearable sculptures containing hidden messages that come to our earth with a “metallic” sensibility to attach themself to the body.
