Page 29 - Studio International - July 1965

Gio' Pomodoro

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The one-sided surfaces of Gio' Pomodoro·s recent manifold. The geometry of this situation is vastly more
sculptures are clearly this altered state of material. and sophisticated in that the transformed surface is not
while it is possible to describe them by the geometry of homeomorphic to the manifold, not the real projective
surfaces-each point on them can be defined by plane, and its points are in a many-one relation to the
cartesian co-ordinates-their mode of generation was points of the linear complex. It is this that we under­
quite other. Topologically, the surfaces are homeo­ stand as the trace of action and which, when we look
morphic to the original flat plane of the cloth from which at the surface, we experience as tension.
they are derived, since the transformation involves only There is a further important aspect of the way these
bending, stretching and compressing. The local space surfaces take shape that bears upon the way they tend
may be Euclidean, but the moment we think of the trans­ to wrap around us and suggest to us movements we
formation of the surface as the result of the enactment must make in relation to them. When Gio' Pomodoro
of the artist's psychic state, this information is minimal. proceeds in the making of a sculpture, stretching,
We must, instead, think of a dynamic interaction of straining, twisting, deforming the plane of the cloth, he
forces in a space-time manifold of which the surface is is making a negative of the surface we eventually see as
the frontier and the action a linear complex in the the sculpture. When the sculpture is cast, the forces

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