MEMORIE DI TANNINO | Time, Sedimentation, Memory
The barrel cellar, a place where time slowly settles into matter and wine refines its identity, becomes a field traversed by silent presences. With MEMORIE DI TANNINO | Time, Sedimentation, Memory, Riccardo Masini presents the third chapter of the ALCHIMIE series, shaping an installation in which wood becomes an archive of traces, a repeated gesture, a construction of memory.
Masini’s research develops around a primary and archetypal element: the pawn. A minimal figure, seemingly marginal, it embodies a profound tension between limitation and possibility, between given condition and transformation. In the artist’s work, the pawn multiplies, expands, and loses its original function to become sign, rhythm, and structure. Arranged in space at different scales and configurations, it generates an unstable landscape—a topography of emergencies and unevenness in which the gaze is called to orient itself without certain coordinates.
As in the vision of a chessboard that disintegrates and rises vertically, the ground ceases to be a surface and becomes an uneven path, made of gradual conquests, pauses, and ascents. Each element seems to hold an inner tension, as if matter itself were traversed by an ongoing process. The pawns moving through this “architecture of uncertainty” must contend with a path that constantly shifts and a destination that remains, inexorably, shrouded in shadow. The pawn is no longer merely a symbol of advancement, but becomes the testimony of a passage, a trace of time accumulating and generating change.
Wood, the material chosen by Masini, amplifies this dimension. A living, porous substance marked by its organic past, it carries within it a stratified memory of growth, cutting, and crafting. In the barrel cellar, wood takes on an additional resonance: it is the very element that receives and accompanies wine in its maturation process, shaping its character, absorbing and returning aromas and identity. The sculptures thus enter into a deep dialogue with the space, sharing its substance and rhythm.
Like wine resting in barrels, Masini’s installation is grounded in a non-immediate temporality, made of waiting and slow transformation. The tannin, evoked in the title, becomes a key to interpretation: an invisible yet determining element, capable of structuring, preserving, and leaving traces over time.
The dialogue with wine is therefore constructed on a processual and sensory level. If in fermentation movement is evident and in fluidity the body expands, in the sculptures time withdraws, thickens, and settles. The wooden surfaces, marked by veins and imperfections, offer an image of matter as a living archive, a space in which every mark is the result of transformation.
MEMORIE DI TANNINO is an immersive and contemplative installation, where repetition does not generate order but variation, and multiplicity does not disperse but concentrates. A
place where the visitor is invited to slow down, to engage with a different time deeper, denser; the same time that, in the silence of the cellar, shapes wine until it reaches its completed form.
by Ilaria Caravaglio