Caio Marcolini’s artistic works confuse itself with his labor and background in the fields of jewelry, art and design. If we can surely imagine the contradictions and particularities of such disciplines, what Caio does is precisely blur those borders, by moving its creations in and out such discursive spaces.

 

To reflect upon the making of sculpture in a contemporary way means retrieving an ancient work that goes back to the origins of Art History to then renovate it. There is a strong historical component, a traditional heritage of sculpture that Caio plays within his artistic practice. While doing so, he investigates the materials, tries them on, develops techniques and tools that combines his technical knowledge to the universe of sculpture, drawing, and crafts to his own needs.

 

His practice is nurtured by the movement: the idea moves as the object is being made, a malleable thread of countless loops, and it is shaped, it shifts, as much as its creator desires. We can also perceive the delicate objects created by the artist through architecture concepts, once rhythm, repetition, and harmony can also find echoes in solidity, function, and beauty aspects of a good building according to Vitruvius.

 

There is, in the constructive search, a direct confrontation between artist and matter - it is by thorough observation that he can finally expand it, change his mind. It is interesting to point out how the artist understands each piece individually but also belonging to a larger set of works that he names acolony.Such organisms, which hold characteristics that can refer to a cellular configuration, spread out, reorganize themselves, in a continuous pulse that it is the one of life itself.

 

As Jean Genet once noticed, by conceptualizing the relation between artwork and observer*, each object creates an innite space, which makes us realize that every work produces its own universe of interpretation. The artists give us leads to find the key to unraveling their creative motivations and conditions, to finally perceive the work, as Genet continues,in its solitude, simultaneously as the image and the real object it represents.

 

Thus, the artist’s role isn’t the one of creating situations or objects to solve the world’s problems, but to live intertwined in a tension between desire and reality, answering with its own tools to the concerns surrounding it. Perhaps one main particularity that can differ the artwork from the craft or the jewel lies in such relation: its non-functionality.

 

For this reason, the artist can move between functions and labors, no explanations needed, since we are speaking of personal and individual demands. Something else happens though when the artwork is moved between different contexts. Every time Caio’s colonies enter a new environment, they may also assume different meanings: they fool the careless gaze while walking unattentively in the city, ooze out walls, dress bodies, and float in the exhibition space, while they are contaminated by its recipients and spectators and can be contaminated as well.

 

*Jean Genet. O ateliê de Giacometti. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify Edições, 2000.