Pozzi Basaltici

In the Pozzi Basaltici wallpaper I recognise the slow gesture of water that has passed through stone unhurriedly, leaving a perfect trace behind it. It is basalt hollowed by glacial falls, the style that gives this design its form: a slab of dark, almost black rock, pierced by three or five cylindrical potholes, each rimmed by a smooth, slightly flared lip, the throat lost in shadow towards a base that cannot be seen. The largest of the holes occupies the centre of the composition, almost frontal, while the smaller ones gather around it, so that every opening stays within view.

Around them the rock breathes: broad, undisturbed surfaces run through by fine mineral veining that curves around each mouth before giving way to the absolute black of the throats. It is a landscape of absence and mass, where the void is not lack but memory: the mark of water long gone, which smoothed the stone with the same patient obstinacy with which, at ZadItaly, every design is composed before becoming a living surface on the wall. To look at this motif from a distance is to read its sculptural power; to come closer is to find the rings of smoothing, the fine fissures, the shifts of tone that tell of the millennial work of the material.

For this reason I believe that the Pozzi Basaltici wallpaper belongs to those who seek, in their own wall, not a simple ornament but a fragment of lived geology, an ancient time made present in the room.