Piero Fogliati, the horns of dilemmas – Tommaso Trini 1991

His sound sculptures stimulate listening. Fogliati possesses the inimitable art of overturning phenomena into the ideas from which they originated. He always traces a thousand effects back to their few underlying causes. Look at the suspended tubular laminate sculptures. Instead of producing sound, they capture the sounds of space. Clearly, they are the auditory prostheses of the environment, the ear trumpets of the air. What we hear is the inaudible tingling of the noises of a world incapable of silence. With the result that the surrounding exteriority is translated into an experience of a circumspect interiority. Like Leonardo, Fogliati has a golden, harmonious vision of the human mind. It is my inner ear, located somewhere between my cerebrum and my spirit, delving into the sound of silence. But like Copernicus, Fogliati knows that man revolves around his mind, and that the mind revolves around an enigma. This is why his work over thirty years has always moved from an investigation of sensory perceptions — through light, sound and colours — to an exploration of the mental processes behind them. Previously known as Ermeneuti, these sound objects sublimate the Latomie Liquide in which the artist evoked environmental musicality by blowing air through water. Today I could call them the Horns of Dilemmas. Among artists working with science and techniques, Fogliati is unique in terms of the rigour and breadth of his research, an extraordinary creator well worth investigating.