Paying ancient homage

Italy's Nino Caruso's works recognize Etruscan influence

In Nino Caruso's world, sculpture replicates memory itself. Very much located in the contemporary, Caruso's work stretches backwards in material abstraction towards the miniscule details of ancient worlds, but these details are themselves surrounded by unrecognizable forms. Looking at a Caruso sculpture is like looking at a picture of a dead grandparent: you can see a resemblance of your own body there, and yet somehow, the familiarity is steeped in inconsolable mystery.
In his current series, Homage To The Etruscans, presented at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Toronto this month, there is also a yearning for a lost past. Here Caruso's sculptures pay 'homage' to an ancient civilization, one which he credits as being as industrious and influential to Western sensibilities as the Greeks and Egyptians. However, the fact that the Etruscans are not recognized in popular discourses inspired Caruso to acknowledge them through his strong architectural-styled sculptures.
It is a homage because Caruso's sculptures for this exhibition feel like the bits or ruins of an archaeological dig. Here columns stand and stretch into the air or lay on their side, the fragments of a once well-orchestrated construction zone, now disintegrating from weather and time. The lines and shapes in some sense are extracted from the ceramic traditions of his Italian roots, but also reference Japanese ceramic forms, such as haniua and raku.
This hybridity of styles and nationalities positions the viewer as the key spectator in a new world: the ceramic object, while reminiscent of a particular civilization, ultimately cannot be located there. For although it may be a homage to the Etruscans, the object has traces of an international journey - the localized object has seemed to rocket around the globe, picking up traces of the countries it has flown over.
Because of this, Caruso has been credited for reinventing the sculptural form and for inspiring viewers to see its unlimited potential as an art form. The curator at the Istituto has said of his sculptures: "In the works by Nino Caruso there is the co-existence between the love for the forms and ancient materials and the attraction towards modern techniques with which he experiments and uses to create very personal architectonic-artistic elements." Caruso aesthetic is the almost-building, the abandoned shrine, the last timber of a fallen house.
But Caruso has not just restricted himself to abstract forms, he has also sculpted vases, doorway structures, furniture, granting all of them a unique displacing quality. A Caruso object automatically calls into question the other objects around it, breaking the space like a kind of formalized punctuation. He begins with the simple desire to visualize a shape, then carves it from polystyrene foam molds, casting ceramic material in them afterwards. Some of the more modular sections are often left unglazed, and then are fitted together to produce a larger piece, which could be a column, doorway, or wall fixture.
Although born in Libya in 1928, Caruso returned to Italy, where his parents had originally immigrated from, to earn a diploma in industrial studies. Aside from a hiatus due to military service, Caruso avidly began creating sculpture, and after a brief starving artist phase, received international recognition for his work, having solo shows throughout Italy, Japan, and the U.S. and his numerous awards include the 1973 Andrea Palladio Award. He has also written several books on ceramic art and techniques, has lectured internationally, and has hosted a television series on ceramic art.
Caruso's work reminds us of the mortality inherent to our own structures and lives and of the human factor present in all design. He brings the body back into the building and vice versa. He is a living legend.
Nino Caruso's Homage to the Etruscans shows at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 496 Huron St., from June 15 to August 13. For more information call 416.921.3802.

Publication Date: 2004-06-13
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