Giuseppe Pagano: Giacometti

Giuseppe Pagano’s journey in the world of Alberto Giacometti commences with the small stones placed on the sculptor’s grave, in Stampa, at the local cemetery surrounded by the high rock faces of Val Bregaglia. From that moment on, and on several occasions, he keeps returning to this valley in pursuit of the evidence of a suspended transition: “I could feel that that place was calling me” – he said – “everywhere I looked I could see unequivocal signs, as though his presence were blocked in that place”. It is only through death that man is, in some way, freed. Death makes life solemn and so, as Berger says, “the essence of Giacometti’s work is the awareness of death”. Since the purpose of action while alive is to see, too much seeing is rather like not seeing, and what is it that we don’t see in life, if not death? Notwithstanding this, Giuseppe Pagano performs this activity of seeing without ever succeeding in “fully rendering” his vision of reality, just as the Swiss sculptor had always frantically sought to do.