Bosco is a 2012 iron sculpture comprising 19 elements arranged in a spiral (h. 400 cm, w × d 540 × 660 cm), evoking a woodland landscape transformed by human intervention, in which the trees follow a swirling, enveloping, almost labyrinthine path. The cylindrical trunks are perforated, and the branches rise upwards without any trace of foliage, casting a shadow over a kind of still life unable to survive human intervention. The forest becomes a forest of memory; one is reminded of Eugenio Montale’s “bald peaks”. It is what remains after a transformation brought about by humankind, even as it denies it.

The spiral of “lifeless” trees does not lead to a centre of rebirth but rather to a point of no return, from which there is no escape; the only possibility is to turn back, retrace one’s steps, and enable nature to rediscover its cosmic dimension; that is to say, to return from a blind vortex to an experience of the otherworldly, of the universal and unifying transformative force underlying the true modes of existence of every biotic and abiotic component of the planet.

As in all of Carlini’s artistic production, the artist immerses herself in the material (iron), recording its intimate ancestral pulse, which finds its alchemical transformation in the work, a new life in Beauty. The reflections evoked in the viewer, as in Filemone e Bauci, connect with the contemporary debate on the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of the planet from an intergenerational perspective.

Marco Eugenio Di Giandomenico