In Nanni Valentini, il vaso e il polipo, exh. cat. (with text by M. Meneguzzo), Galleria Vera Biondi, Florence, February 1982
Ever since working with clay I have always recalled the idea that the ancient philosopher expressed on nature: ‘The substance of the things that have the principle of movement within them’. So the earth too has invited man to choose, with the idea of a convexity, vessels that would be useful to him. But the form that emerged like that has claimed its own presence; and those objects were decorated with rhythmic patterns, animals, stories, flowers, leaves until an ingenuous artist represented an octopus on the vase. Even if inside there was the story of the hero who had become spirit, the vase was entangled in those tentacles, its handle banished and lost (even if it was replaced by the serpent as a link with the world). But the myth has vindicated itself by petrifying the monster on its surface (Adam’s stone?). My friend tells me that the geometries of the hand are a property of the vase, that the leaf was its measure, the octopus its comprehension, that it can participate symmetrically in emptiness as a container of echoes and breath, and in fullness as a vessel to contain food and seeds; just as its surface participates externally in the field of tangents and internally in the field of centrality (the poet is placed in the middle of this continuum). The octopus, on the other hand, follows its destiny beyond itself; it is searching for the face. The monster, the selfsame, the words without hills, sea, sun, are all reflected in that little spirit image. But the earth cannot assimilate it to the silence of the poet (pierced by the word) because its silence is that of the seed. There is neither the horizon of difference nor the material for simulacra in it, but the lost handle of the vase can be found there. That is why the vase, the octopus, the earth desire to return separately. I have tried to harmonise the tone of this presentation with a gaze without expectations that might modify this time. I dedicate this work to the ceramicist Alfonso Leoni.