Giovanni Ozzola

Chiocciole – Your Lips Make Me Nervous, 2017, bronze and iron, 213 × 13.7 × 5.5 cm

Paying attention to the small details of everyday life can sometimes bring unexpected delight: the traces of life on the surfaces of rebar, milling tools, beams, and chains… These products of human ingenuity have been abandoned and altered by time, and corroded by water and rust. Yet now, these discarded materials serve as homes for snails. In Chiocciole – Your Lips Make Me Nervous, these tiny creatures carrying their shells become a perfect mathematical expression of the golden ratio. However, these beautiful forms of life seem drawn to their opposites—nourished by rust.