MASSIMODECARLO is pleased to unveil Baci, a limited-edition sculpture by Italian artist Paola Pivi.
With Baci, Pivi transforms one of Italy’s most iconic confections - the Bacio Perugina - into sculpture. She first explored this symbol in 1997, placing two Bacio Perugina on a shelf for Fuori Uso in Provincia. Mercato Globale, a group show in Pescara, Italy. Nearly three decades later, that gesture takes on new weight, reimagined in stainless bronze. Two chocolates meet at their base, their smooth metallic curves locked in a timeless kiss. In this embrace, the everyday becomes profound.
The use of bronze in Baci echoes You know who I am, Pivi’s large-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty on the High Line in New York. While that work reinterprets an emblem of freedom, Baci immortalizes a moment of intimacy, suspending the ephemeral in weighty form. Bronze, a material historically reserved for statues of heroes and legends, here captures the sculptural poetry of an everyday indulgence.
In fusing these twin forms, Pivi plays with dualities: intimacy and mass production, sensuality and commercial branding, nostalgia and the alchemy of transformation. Baci is both playful and monumental, a kiss that lingers, sculpted into permanence.
The Artist
Born in Italy in 1971, Paola Pivi’s artistic practice is diverse and enigmatic.
For Pivi, art is an expression of reality liberated to its fullest potential, conveying the most profound emotions through diverse materials. Her art often features recognisable objects like airplanes, polar bears, and pearls. However, Pivi modifies these objects unexpectedly, encouraging her audience to reconsider their preconceived notions of what they represent. Through this approach, she creates a unique form of utopian extravagance, continuously exploring new expressive forms and pushing the boundaries of artistic creation.
One of Pivi's most captivating series is her Pearls artworks. Accumulation of lines of pearls, these paintings decline a nuancier of colors going from the ivory to the black whose declinations of tints celebrate the various colors of the skin. To realize them, Pivi appropriated the result of the “work” of a multitude of oysters. She has also seized on the similarity between the painter’s work on a canvas and the action of an oyster that deposits layer after layer of nacre on the pearl.
Pivi's art is a statement on the human experience, exploring the boundaries between reality and imagination, ordinary and extraordinary.