A curation by Flavio Scaloni, Gallery Manager at Galerie Lo Scalo - The theme of pipes is a compelling artistic subject, revealing the hidden structures and systems that govern our world. As a symbol of infrastructure, flow, and interconnectedness, pipes represent the vital, often unseen, conduits that sustain modern life. Psychologically, they can evoke the complex, subterranean networks of our own minds or the rigid, mechanical nature of our environment. The motif gained a new conceptual weight in 20th-century art, famously interrogated by Magritte. Post-1950, artists continued this inquiry. The painter Charles Sheeler, a key figure in Precisionism, continued to create meticulous works depicting industrial structures, celebrating the geometric forms and complex networks of pipes and tubes that defined the American landscape. The world-famous photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher built their career documenting these structures with a detached, systematic approach. Their typologies of cooling towers, water towers, and other factory components, such as Water Towers, Wismar, Germany (1983), turn these complex networks of pipes and tubes into objects of formal beauty. This collection celebrates the pipe as a metaphor for the hidden mechanics of both our external and internal worlds.
18 Artworks
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