The 5 Elements: Stone Books

All the works created during the Friuli Venezia Giulia Stone Sculpture Symposium represent the thought, culture, existential and aesthetic choices of a single author. Each sculptor — and only they — can claim the genesis and creation of their own work. 

Here, however, I must speak of a work — borrowing from Pirandello — in search of an author. No one alone can claim it. Even its genesis is uncertain; I witnessed it and can attest to that. 

The idea came from Roberto Cossettini, who imagined books made of stone. As is natural (especially after 25 years of experience), the plastic realisation of the idea was entrusted to a sculptor, Alfredo Pecile — though not without certain limitations, indications, or guidelines from the symposium director. 

I) The stones had to be different, just as the quarries and mountains of our region are different. 
II) All the sculptors who would take part in this 25th Symposium — even for just one day — had to be able to work on them. In the end, everyone would leave their imprint. 

A new idea? Not really. It is said that someone once carved words into stone amid a burning bush on Sinai. We might call that the first stone book we know of. Perhaps Moses struggled to carry it — but we are certain it endured. 

Words are stones, as the saying goes — and they mostly dwell in objects called books. Books: the most loved and revered objects, humble containers of knowledge, beauty and thought, carefully preserved in libraries. 

Books: also the most feared and hated objects, healthy carriers of the “virus” called culture, destroyed in the fires of Alexandria and Berlin. When one seeks to annihilate a culture or silence free thought, books are the first to be destroyed. Soon after, statues and monuments follow. 

And so the meaning of the sculpture-books of Vergnacco becomes clear. Where else could they have been born if not in a place where different cultures, backgrounds, personalities and languages have met, recognised one another, intertwined and respected each other? 

A place where the word “friend” has sounded in a thousand different accents but carried the same meaning. Where solidarity has taken concrete, everyday form. Where no one is left alone, no one left behind. Where culture means sharing, acceptance, respect for oneself and for others. 

In short: a symposium. 

Jorge Luis Borges once described a book as “a prism with six rectangular faces.” Our stones are indeed six-faced prisms, clearly recognisable as books. They have a spine, and one can glimpse their pages. They offer themselves to be read through symbols, for leafing through them would otherwise be impossible. The Fior di Pesco — a light, poetic name — bears the symbols of water and air. The Rosso Verzegnis, with its more evocative tone, carries the symbols of fire and earth. In these four elements we can read all the grace and beauty they bring — without them there is no life — but also the terror they inspire when they become death and destruction, reminding us that we are not masters of the world. 

On the Piasentina stone — the first stone ever used in this Symposium — the DNA chain has been engraved: the code of life. Of every life. Of every species. Human, animal, plant, mineral. Life — and nothing else. This is the Fifth Element. 

On these symbols and concepts — shaped by their own cultures, beliefs, life experiences and, why not, by the books that formed them — all the sculptors who have participated over these 25 years have worked. These were their first tools in confronting and mastering the stone. 

The stone books tell their story. They bear the imprint of their hands — and of those who organised, collaborated, documented, nourished and hosted. They narrate 25 years of this symposium. 

It is a collective narration transformed into collective work. And in the end, yes — the work has found its author. It has a name both small and immense, modest and powerful. It is simply called: US.

Bianca Minigutti