Truly Italian RootsTruly Italian – PASSION – Paolo Mezzadri
Iron as matter, fire as an element, passion as an engine, sculpture as a challenge. The creative universe of Paolo Mezzadri, between sculpture and poetry, has its roots in the artisan tradition of his blacksmith grandfather. After working for a period in the family business, he himself felt the need to change, listening to “the letters and scrap pieces of iron”.
“Many times I have lost myself looking at pieces that looked the same…indeed compliant, as I was often told…so identical and so perfect that they do not have a soul. Designed to be used and not to be looked at, to be clean and not to be smelled”.
Today, his most creative path can be found in the rooms of the Castello di Cadeo, where we can admire his most representative pieces. That antique passion for iron, a strong yet so flexible material, evolved and transformed into something never seen before: Paolo’s art.
For example, “Root” in raw iron, which rises in an unstable equilibrium up to almost three meters high, the “Dialogues” made of letters obtained from thermal cuts “which not only narrate but which give a real shape to everyday life”- says the artist. Then, we can admire “Pensieri Alti”, where old wooden shoe shapes travel on tall iron rods, or the oversized iron letters “that tell the unspoken, rusted over time”, the material surfaces of tables and chairs, or the most recent works composed of the simple shapes of juxtaposed circle and square.
Past, present and future float in the surrounding air and meet in the vortex of a suspended time that welcomes as change only the flow of patterns, colors, textures; the years marked on the metal.
Often his works, the result of “travels, writings, readings and silence” – so he says – are accompanied by phrases that sound like a personal testament, told by “Nino”, the alter ego of Paolo.
It’s passion, indeed, that molds and shapes Paolo’s works, and that writes Nino’s thoughts on paper, on iron, on rust.
In this universe of actions and reflections, there is still room to stop. “For me, the coffee break is an indefinite moment, an important one to define breaths, encounters, solutions. Pause is when time stops, and you slow down just enough to notice small things and infinite gestures”.
The coffee experience is, for Paolo, like the mental and emotional photograph of a moment, a space of time that naturally becomes fixed like a sculpture. It is free and out of necessity, as only a moment of play can be, because time is a game, isn’t it?
Freedom and serenity are the same words that come to mind when we think of relaxing in front of a Gaggia coffee machine: it is our eternal instant, our little temporal sculpture. And, without passion, it would not be the same.
You can discover Paolo’s work at the Castle of Cadeo, via Carpaneto 1, Cadeo (PC).
To learn more about it, visit the website www.paolomezzadri.com or go to Instagram@paolo.mezzadri e @metallifilati.