miki tallone

The sculpture Inhabiting Listening likewise invites a multisensory aesthetic experience in which perception expands beyond sight to engage tactile, spatial, olfactory, and imaginative dimensions. The work exists in two material variants that, while sharing the same formal structure, activate different perceptual modes and complementary reflections on the relationship between matter, form, and sensoriality. The first version, Inhabiting Listening I, is crafted from natural cedar wood, foregrounding the material's organic and sensorial qualities and introducing an olfactory component and a pronounced vital charge. Here the work holds a dynamic balance between minimalist formal tensions and biomorphic suggestions. While its morphology may evoke natural structures, it never resolves into explicit figuration, instead maintaining an ambivalent, allusive quality. This formal ambiguity accentuates the work's openness: a mutable, resonant presence that calls for attentive, unhurried, immersive viewing.

photo: Antonio Maniscalco

photo: Antonio Maniscalco

The second variant, Inhabiting Listening II, employs the Japanese technique of Shou Sugi Ban (yakisugi), an ancient method of charring wood to preserve it and enhance the surface aesthetically. This treatment radically transforms the matter: the carbonized, black, deeply textured skin alters the work's sensitive perception, intensifying its visual density and tactile complexity. Although the formal configuration remains identical to the cedar version, the overall effect is profoundly transfigured. The new material quality induces a different reading of the volume, evoking memory, otherness, and temporality that transcend the sculptures physicality.
In both versions, Inhabiting Listening presents itself as a plastic organism that challenges the distinctions between object and space, form and perception. The title functions as an interpretive device, orienting the viewer toward an idea of "inhabiting" that is not limited to spatial presence but extends to a sensitive and receptive attitude towards the work and the world. Listening, in this context, is not reducible to the auditory alone; it becomes a broader perceptual stance capable of activating a deep, transformative relation with matter, form, and the void the work inhabits.

photo: Antonio Maniscalco