Elusive Shapes between Poetry and Natural Power

In “Elusive Shapes” Erminio Tansini proposes a union among sculpture, photography, and landscape; a work reuniting and condensing the artist’s creativity, the characteristics of places and the emotions evoked from his artistic productions.

These artistic works do not intend on competing with the perfection of nature; they incorporate it and make it their own.

The rough aspect of the wood generates an apparent contrast between the poetic attention to detail and the power of each single element used.

This contrast is one of the basic details in “Elusive Shapes”; the raw elements physically and visually mixed together in order to create a harmonious cocoon of volume and shapes involving even the landscape that is used as a setting.

Bit by bit, while observing, you can perceive multiple shades of meaning – appearing and mutating with the movement of spaces and materials.

The substance of the shapes becomes a feeling; it becomes one with the landscape, but at the same time remains individually recognisable. This is another of the key points used by Tansini.

The photograph preserves the performance over time and, through the photographic angles, reinforces the organicity of the surroundings.

At a first glance, it is difficult to imagine the sculpture away from the scenery used for its setting; almost as if the work were stripped of life.

And yet, the same piece has no difficulty in regenerating in another context: again, united with the landscape yet individually recognisable, with a different but still meaningful poem – giving vital nourishment to “Elusive Shapes”.

Dragana Kostić

Drawn from; “In Primapagina”, Crema, 1662, XXXV, 2020, p. 10. Translated from Italian by Lorna Rossi (2020).