Lorenzo Cambin

Swiss artist Lorenzo Cambin was born on 21 July 1958, in Lugano (Cantone Ticino). After an initial artistic training period, from 1974 to 1978, in the decorative arts department of his home town’s Centro scolastico per le industrie artistiche (CSIA), he specialised in Italy, where he studied for two years in the chalcography section at the state institute in Urbino. He later went to the Brera Academy in Milan, where he studied in the painting department from 1980 to 1984. In 1991, he was a guest resident at the Cité des Arts in Paris. Around the year 1990 he quit painting to dedicate himself exclusively to sculpture, an experience that has strongly marked all of his artistic production since then, as he has never executed his work in a traditional manner. Instead of compact forms, his hands gave birth to installations as well as graceful objects, carefully tared, made in stone, wood, clay, plaster and bronze. Already, in this early stage of his career, it was space rather than volume that interested Cambin, both in concrete and figurative terms. Cambin makes an independent contribution to contemporary sculpture, especially for his profound sense of nature, as expressed in the resources used in his work: carefully calibrated models made of stone, wood and other primary materials. Cambin’s differentiating treatment involves space, generated by nature and movement, which in both its static and dynamic form is born of balance. He feels particularly bound to the mountains, which he seeks to be in direct and ongoing dialogue with. A vivid expression of this is the piece inspired by nature, with blades of grass swaying in the wind, which he presented in the summer of 2017 in the region between the Grigioni and Ticino cantons. This subject matter would be frequently represented as well in the rest of his creative production.

Point of Reference: Nature Cambin’s “in balance” work does not only consist of art objects, but also takes on current social questions, such as the conservation of ecological equilibrium. A comparable issue to sustainability is the ever-present subject of balancing work and life, finding harmony between physical and emotional domains. Cambin reminds us that our environment and the human body are living, open systems, where external influxes can cause disturbances and anxiety. The delicate structure of his work is the symbol of this permeable vulnerability.

Interaction Aristotle’s famous saying, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, is ideally adapted in Cambin’s current work. These pieces have been created by rearranging similar elements. One feature taken alone, indeed, would never