Nuova Galleria Morone presents Una pietra sopra, the first solo exhibition in the gallery spaces of Marco Cordero, accompanied by a critical text edited by Paul Ardenne.

The exhibition is a deep exploration of the intersections between sculpture, text and memory. The main element of Marco Cordero’s sculptures is a book, a real book, which the artist appropriates but reworks: hollowed out, burned, torn from its function as a book. In his work, the book becomes a living organism, an assemblage of materials that, through their combination, acquire a vital arrangement. In this exhibition, Marco Cordero links the fate of his books to rock, stone, and marble. This combination gives rise to surprising hybrids: books as rocks or rocks as books. The artist arranges these hybrids in various ways in the gallery space: he suspends them to reconstitute a skyline, he places them on the floor, he even combines them, for example, with a stone column that recalls one of the elements of the gallery’s architecture.

The title in italian, Una pietra sopra (turn the page), refers in a figurative sense to forgetting and moving on, or in a literary sense to preserving, protecting, keeping intact, to prevent the wind from scattering: sheets, notes, ideas, or furthermore, one puts on the ‘cairns’ (piles of votive stones or indicating paths to pilgrims), to add one’s own contribution, one’s own prayer one’s own sign. Cordero’s works manifest themselves as open areas, narrating shadows of words and deep meanings. Books rendered almost illegible, they become both matter and means of expression, with evocative titles that suggest the infinite nuances and ambiguities of language.

Marco Cordero (Roccavione, 1969) lives and works mainly in Turin. Since the late 1990s, his research has focused on the possible or impossible narratives that human beings construct to share their relationships with architectural, natural and spiritual space. The book, in all its meanings, has become the most common material of his works. His works have been exhibited in foundations, private galleries and museums in Italy and abroad.