‘WITH A LINE OF GRAPHITE/CON UNA LINEA DI GRAFITE’ is the title of the exhibition that Lawrence Weiner presents at the Galleria Massimo De Carlo – a show of sculptures based on the materiality of a pencil line. It is also the work on the entrance wall that welcomes all visitors that approach the Gallery. Weiner, one of the central figures of Conceptual art, was born 1942, in the Bronx, New York. He currently lives and works between New York and Amsterdam. The wall installations that have been a primary medium for him since the 1960s consist of words in a nondescript lettering painted on walls, which investigates the relationship between human beings and objects – most often common objects found in daily life, such as steel, iron, wood. Although this body of work focuses on the potential for language to serve as an art form, the subjects of his epigrammatic statements are often materials, or a physical action or process, as exemplified by such works as ‘MODIFIED/MODERATED WITH A LINE OF GRAPHITE’ or ‘TRACES OF GRAPHITE USED TO REPRESENT SOMETHING OUTSIDE OF ITSELF’. In 1968, Weiner created a small book entitled Statements; as the work consisted of nothing but words, there was no reason to display a physical object. Since then, the artist has continued to explore the creative possibilities of language, and he has definitely turned to language as the primary vehicle for his work. Recent retrospective exhibitions of the artist’s work have been mounted at the MoCA in Los Angeles and at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. With their almost poetic precision, his statements often resemble other forms of public written inscription, such as signage, placards, or even advertising, yet they insist on being read differently: on being read as sculptures.