Renato Nicolodi
, Brussels, Belgium — Lives and works in Borchtlombeek, Belgium
Renato Nicolodi seeks to evoke a universal sacrality in his work. His sculptures and paintings imagine spaces with corridors and stairs leading to closed-off passage-ways. Light and shade draw the gaze of the spectator to the inside of the construction, which remains invisible. The core of the work seems to conserve some sort of emptiness. The artist refers to archetypical buildings from past times and cultures, stripping them from their original function, ornament and dogma.
He creates monuments, relics, shrines that conserve both the memory and the thought of the maker as well as those of the spectator. Nicolodi’s sculptures and paintings form mental beacons for people who live in an age where society has gone in overdrive; in a time where everything is questioned: science, technology, nature, culture and the position of man within all of this. The works are visual anchors that invite the spectator to meditate and reflect. They form the physical and mental access points through which the spectator can meander through his or her own mental space.