ARTTYCO TALKS
Luciano Massari explores landscape, silence, and transformation through sculptural forms shaped by marble, memory, and space.
ARTTYCO TALKS | May 15, 2026.
EPISODE #28: LUCIANO MASSARI
1. Your work repeatedly moves between sculpture, landscape, memory, and silence. How do these concepts begin to take form within your creative process, and how has your relationship with Carrara shaped the way you understand sculpture today?
L: For me, sculpture never arises from a purely formal idea. It begins instead with a tension, with an almost physical perception of a space, a memory, or a silent presence that I sense exists even before the work itself. Often, the process starts by observing a place, a material, a light, or by listening to the time that an environment holds within itself. The landscape – especially that of the quarries – is never merely a backdrop, but a vital component of sculptural thought.
I do not consider silence in my work as an absence, but rather as a necessary condition that allows matter to speak without superstructures. I believe sculpture should have the ability to slow down the gaze, to create a mental space as much as a physical one. When I intervene, I always seek a profound relationship between weight and lightness, presence and void, human gesture and geological time.
I believe that the context of Carrara has deeply influenced my understanding of sculpture, because here matter is not something abstract, but an integral part of daily life, history, and landscape, to the point of shaping even the character of its people. Growing up and working in close contact with marble means constantly confronting something ancient, powerful, and irreducible. The quarries teach respect for matter, but also a sense of proportion: they make you understand that sculpting does not mean imposing a form, but rather entering into dialogue with a force that has existed for millions of years and to which, ultimately, we are still subject.
Today, I perceive sculpture as an act of relationship between humankind and nature, between memory and contemporaneity, between matter and vision. The territory in which I live has taught me that marble is not simply a noble material, but an archive of time itself, and working with it means, in some way, taking a position in relation to time.
2. Marble has historically been associated with permanence and monumentality, yet in your work it often feels fragile, suspended, and almost atmospheric. What interests you about working against the traditional weight and symbolism of the material?
L: What interests me is precisely that point of tension between what marble has historically represented and what it can still become. Marble carries with it a vast legacy and, throughout the centuries, it has been synonymous with monumentality, eternity, celebration and affirmation of power, and the idea of perfection. Within the artistic context, it has often been used to assert something solid, permanent, and enduring.
What I seek, instead, is the opposite: I am interested in bringing marble into a condition of vulnerability, suspension, almost emotional instability, because I believe that sculpture today should no longer simply occupy space with strength and determination, but should also generate a subtle and sensitive perception – something more human, and therefore fragile.
Working against the weight of marble means freeing it from its own stereotype. When I try to make it “atmospheric,” light, or permeated by light, I am not denying its nature; rather, I am searching for a more synchronous dimension of the material. I am interested in the moment when a material that has traversed geological eras can nevertheless appear precarious, temporary, destined to dissolve. It is within this contradictory nature of marble that I find a powerful poetic tension.
I believe that my relationship with the Carrara quarries where I work has deeply shaped this way of thinking, because experiencing marble in its original state, immersed in landscapes that are almost lunar, carved out and silent – especially when human activity comes to a halt – makes you perceive that this material is not immobile, as it is so often described, but alive, marked by fractures, pressures, and continuous transformations.
In my work, I try to bring precisely this dimension forward: not to use marble as a static symbol of perfection, but as a body traversed by time, light, and memory.
This is precisely what interests me: removing from marble the idea of absolute certainty and restoring to it a more vulnerable and spiritual dimension, where even emptiness, silence, and suspension become sculptural matter.
3. Throughout your practice, the idea of the island appears recurrently, both physically and metaphorically. What does the island represent for you, and how did your experience on Easter Island influence the evolution of your artistic language?
L: For me, the island represents, first and foremost, a mental condition: a place separated from the rest, a capsule in which time seems to move differently, and where the relationship between human beings, nature, and memory emerges in a more essential and authentic form. In my practice, the concept of the island is a constant, because it embodies a boundary between presence and distance, belonging and disorientation, between what remains and what slowly disappears.
I am interested in the island as a space of concentration and meditation, where everything becomes more evident: matter, silence, wind, light, the very idea of limit. I believe sculpture functions in much the same way: it should be understood as an autonomous body, occupying a precise portion of space, while at the same time generating invisible relationships with what surrounds it.
My experience on Easter Island had a profound impact on my artistic practice, and it was there that I truly grasped the relationship between sculpture and landscape. The Moai are not simply monumental works; they are presences that alter the perception of space, time, and even silence itself. We know they are archaic sculptures, yet they feel extraordinarily contemporary, because they do not communicate through individual stories or specific narratives. Rather, they assert an absolute and universal presence.
That experience made me understand that sculpture is not merely an object, but an energetic field, a threshold between the human and the ancestral dimension. There, I also learned the value of subtraction: on the island, everything appears essential — the volcanic landscape, the ocean, the wind, the stone. Nothing is excessive. Since then, I have felt the need to make my language more essential, more “silent,” capable of leaving space for perception.
I believe the island continues to return in my work because it contains within itself a paradox that feels deeply familiar to me: it is a physically limited place, yet mentally infinite. And perhaps sculpture, when it truly works, does the same thing: it defines a concrete space while simultaneously transcending the physical boundaries of matter.
4. Many of your projects exist in direct dialogue with architecture, nature, or public space. How does the surrounding environment affect the way you conceive a sculpture, and what role does space play in the emotional experience of the work?
L: Let me begin with a premise: for me, an artwork is never an autonomous object simply placed within a space, but almost always emerges from a deep relationship with the environment surrounding it. Whether it is architecture, an urban landscape, or a natural setting, space is never a neutral container, but rather an active and integral part of the work itself.
When I begin to conceive a work, I first try to understand the invisible tensions of a place: the light, the proportions, the rhythm of emptiness, the weight of silence, the memory that the space retains. I am interested in understanding how the human body will move through that environment and in what way the sculpture might alter the perception of time and presence within it.
I often think of sculpture as a perceptual device rather than a closed form. I am not interested solely in what the work is or represents, but in what it is capable of activating around itself. A shift in light, a slowing of the gaze, a physical tension between matter and emptiness – these elements transform landscape and architecture into sculptural material.
I believe that my relationship with the environment of the marble quarries in the Apuan Alps profoundly shaped this approach: there one understands how the scale of space can completely transform the meaning of matter. A carved wall, a fracture, a mass suspended within the mountain possess an emotional force that goes beyond form itself. It is probably from this experience that my interest in works capable of engaging with the environment in an almost organic way originates, without imposing themselves as foreign presences.
In public space, this dimension becomes even more significant because sculpture enters people’s real lives and must coexist with other elements such as movement, everyday time, and collective memory. I do not strongly believe in self-referential artworks; I am interested in creating a shared and silent emotional condition, capable of disrupting and transforming the perception of space.
Space is an integral part of the material of the work itself, and without a relationship to what surrounds it, sculpture risks remaining merely form. When it truly enters into dialogue with a place, however, it can become an experience.
5. Silence seems to inhabit many of your works, not only conceptually but physically. What does silence mean within your practice, and how do you translate it into sculptural form?
L: For me, silence is never emptiness or absence, but a dense and intense presence – almost an invisible matter that runs through the work. In my practice, silence represents a space of listening and suspension, a moment in which the artwork ceases to be exegetical – no longer explaining itself or producing meaning in a declarative way – and simply begins to exist.
We live in a time that is extremely saturated with images, information, and visual noise; for this reason, I feel the need to create works that do not immediately impose a meaning, but instead leave room for slow time and contemplation. I am interested in when a sculpture is able to generate a mental condition even before an aesthetic one.
I try to translate silence through the essentiality of form, in the relationship between fullness and emptiness, in the tension between weight and lightness, but above all in the way the work inhabits space. Light is also fundamental: a surface that absorbs or reflects, a nearly rarefied presence exerts on me a much stronger suggestion than a spectacular gesture.
Marble, in this sense, is an extraordinary material: despite its strength and density, it contains an extremely deep dimension of stillness. When I work with it, I often try to synthesize rather than add marks; I am interested in reaching a point where the material seems to enclose something rather than reveal it openly, as if the work were holding a memory or an internal energy that is not fully disclosed.
Anyone who truly enters a quarry understands that silence is never total: it is made of wind, distance, echo, the tension of the mountain. It is a physical, almost ancestral silence. I believe that many of my works arise precisely from this experience, from the desire to translate that perception into form.
I believe that expressing silence in sculpture means creating a presence that does not need to raise its voice in order to be perceived, but that nevertheless remains active – capable of continuing to act even after the gaze has moved away.
