... The work that I made for the National Gallery of Modern Art, on the occasion of its rebuilding, is titled "Passi", "Steps".
The project is designed for the so-called "hall of columns", or rather, as called by the architect Bazzani, "hall of ceremonies".
The installation is made with safety mirrors which, made with a thermal process that makes to think about the melting of glaciers, is crumbling.
The work also arises in relation to the idea of hosting a collection of monumental sculptures in the Gallery's collection of nineteenth century, which I have personally chosen. It is mostly images of women, dedicated to the woman's age and the transformation of her figure during the whole century.
Sculptures have highly evocative and literary titles, and are collected as the small part of a larger novel and are displayed without base, placed directly on the ground so they loose their character of "heaven projection".
Since the statues are in marble and plaster, so very heavy, give the idea that are themselves the source of this rupture.
Important player of the installation and exhibit for the first time, is the death mask of the face of Antonio Canova. Canova was the artist who was dedicated to his birth the National Gallery, the sculptor of which was discussed at that time, if it was the last of the olds or the first of the moderns, and the fact that his death was taken with a sculptural technique, actually a photograph, is a significant gesture.
I am very proud to have had the opportunity to study these sculptures, which I knew only in part, and I have chosen not many famous works, some of which were stored in warehouses and have never been exhibited.
Being able to work by exploring the museum that collects a so great tradition of Italian art, for me it is a very important thing ....
.... Actually my works involve the viewer only apparently. We must think about the mirror as a classical matter to build images. What interests me is not so much to attract the viewer in a mechanism that incorporates and makes him a sharer, but give the illusion that it is, when in fact it's incorporated in nothing but a fleeting image, and mostly is an image changing and not reality.
There is also another interesting aspect that has to do with the acoustic aspect of the work, which reminds us the crushing of an arctic landscape, that leaves room for water to replace the ice ...

Alfredo Pirri