Alberto Gianfreda. Breaking as Possibility
Interview by Valeria Zerbo and Amalia Di Lanno
For Alberto Gianfreda, breaking a form does not necessarily mark its end. It can instead become the beginning of another condition — one in which fragments retain their identity while acquiring new possibilities through movement, connection and change.
Across more than two decades of sculptural research, Gianfreda has worked with ceramics, marble, stone, wood and metal, questioning the idea of sculpture as something fixed and immutable. Central to his practice is a reversal of values: the fragment, commonly understood as the remains of something complete, becomes an opportunity for encounter; the chain, traditionally associated with constraint, becomes a connective structure that permits movement. Destruction is transformed into potential.
Ceramics occupies a particularly significant place within this research. Its inherent contradiction — resistant yet capable of shattering in an instant — mirrors a wider tension that Gianfreda recognises in contemporary society. The ceramic vessel, perfected over centuries as a functional and symbolic object, embodies an idea of completeness. By deliberately breaking that form, the artist does not erase its identity. Instead, he allows it to persist through transformation.
This approach is particularly evident in series such as Nothing As It Seems and Effimera, where ceramic vessels are intentionally fragmented and reconstructed through flexible structures of metal chains. The rigid object becomes a mobile sculptural body, able to assume different configurations while remaining recognisable. The original function is lost, but the object does not disappear: it enters another state.
Movement is essential to this transformation. Gianfreda’s sculptures are not repaired objects in the conventional sense. Their structures allow them to respond to gravity, handling, space and circumstance. Form becomes provisional rather than definitive, and the work exists through its ability to continue changing.
This understanding of sculpture extends far beyond material experimentation. For Gianfreda, art must open a space that cannot be entirely resolved — a space of reflection, mystery and recognition. Increasingly, his research asks whether sculpture might cease to operate merely as an object and instead become a subject: something capable of generating care, activating relationships and inhabiting the complexities of contemporary life.
In this conversation, Alberto Gianfreda discusses the symbolic power of ceramics, the role of chains within his sculptural language, the meaning of fragmentation and reconstruction, and the evolving relationship between artwork and viewer.
“Breaking is something we tend to perceive as terminal. Within my research, however, it becomes a possibility.” Alberto Gianfreda
Your practice moves across sculpture, installation and ceramics. Was there a particular moment when you realised that ceramics could become the most appropriate language for your research? What does this material allow you to express that others cannot?
Ceramics is one of the materials that runs through my research, alongside others, but it is certainly one to which I have devoted particular attention over the years. I would not therefore describe ceramics as the most appropriate language for my work in absolute terms. Rather, at a certain point I recognised in it a very precise correspondence between its physical characteristics and its symbolic value.
Ceramics is resistant and fragile at the same time. It is a material that requires care and attention, yet it can shatter with a single blow. At the same time, the vase, the container, the new ceramic object almost perfectly represents the idea of a finished, functional form, optimised according to desire. It is a kind of perfection that, precisely for this reason, seems to me deeply connected to the society in which we live.
This correspondence between the physical nature of the material and the symbolic value attributed to it across different societies, periods and places responded exactly to what I was searching for.
After years of investigating materials, and above all the relationships they establish within my sculptures, I understood that ceramics could introduce a particular tension into my work: between resistance and fragility, perfection and the possibility of fracture.
On the left: Alberto Gianfreda, Effimera blu, 2019. Ceramic and aluminium chain, 200 × 150 × 30 cm. Variable form and dimensions. On the right: Alberto Gianfreda, Piccola Effimera and Nothing as it seems. Ceramic and aluminium chain.
Your works seem to make visible something that normally remains hidden — a tension, a contradiction, perhaps a condition of our time. Do you think the role of the artist is to activate a reflection that extends beyond the materiality of the work?
I believe that art must always open up a dimension of the invisible. If it loses this ability, it also loses its specificity, which is not functional but reflective.
Today, this capacity to open and reveal has become even more complex because of the presence of technology. Technology appears to reveal what we do not know, but there is a crucial distinction: technology tends to answer mystery and resolve it, whereas art tends to generate it.
That is why we will always need art — and good artists.
I would like to talk about the video you recently shared on Instagram, which became viral. The ceramic teapots, already fractured, are held together by chains and set in motion. The chain does not seem to repair the object so much as give a new presence to its fracture. What do chains represent within your research, and how did they enter your sculptural language?
The chains, like many of the elements in my work, attempt to reverse the meaning we normally attribute to them.
Breaking, for example, is something we tend to perceive as terminal. Within my research, however, it becomes a possibility.
In the series Nothing As It Seems, to which the works shown in the video belong, the vase itself transforms its condition: it moves from being a functional object to becoming a sculpture and a unique piece.
The same transformation happens with the chains. They entered my work by gradually replacing the powerful iron hooks I had previously used to hold materials and fragments together. But the chain does more than simply hold the fragments in place. It gives them the possibility of remaining together while, at the same time, allowing the whole sculpture to move.
What I found particularly interesting is that this reversal of meaning was understood by many of the people who saw the video. People from very different parts of the world, including places marked by conflict such as Ukraine, Russia and Iran, recognised something of themselves in those works and in their capacity to adapt, resist and continue to exist through a different form.
Alberto Gianfreda, Nothing as It seems and View of the movement and transformation of form, 2018. Ceramic and aluminium chain, variable form and dimensions.
Breaking, in your work, never seems to operate as a destructive gesture. On the contrary, it appears to open new possibilities of meaning. What does an object become when it loses its original form?
There is an image I encountered many years ago in Aptico. Il senso della scultura that has stayed with me and perhaps contains the most precise answer to this question.
The idea is that if a vase falls from a cliff and breaks, it stops being a vase. If a sculpture falls and breaks, however, it continues to be a sculpture.
I am deeply interested in this irreducibility of sculpture.
For me, fragmentation is not a destructive gesture but a gesture of love. It also means taking care of the fragment, because not everything that is broken can be reconstructed.
Dust cannot.
Your works transform everyday objects into images capable of evoking shared experiences. What do you hope the viewer might discover about themselves through your work?
When standing in front of a work of art, the viewer is always standing in front of a mirror. Sometimes that mirror reflects; sometimes it does not.
When it does, however, it can be extremely powerful because it allows us to recognise ourselves.
It is through this recognition that a dialogue can begin. The viewer moves from being a passive subject to becoming a participant, contributing to the completion of the meaning of the work itself.
Every artistic practice evolves through new questions. Which questions are currently guiding your work, and towards which territories do you feel your research is moving?
The question that interests me most today is how sculpture can respond to the contemporary world by fully becoming part of it, without being reduced to the condition of an object.
I am increasingly interested in thinking of sculpture as a subject: something capable of generating forms of attachment and care, of activating relationships within heterogeneous communities, between divergent ways of thinking, and within the forms of solitude that characterise our time.
This is the direction in which I feel my research is moving today: towards a sculpture that does not simply represent a condition, but is capable of entering it and inhabiting it, generating relationships with it.
Biography
Alberto Gianfreda was born in Desio, Italy, in 1981. He graduated in Sculpture from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in 2003 and later specialised in Arts and Anthropology of the Sacred, completing a period of study at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. He subsequently specialised in the artistic treatment of metals through the TAM programme under the direction of Nunzio Di Stefano.
Alongside his artistic practice, Gianfreda has developed an extensive teaching career and currently holds the chair of Sculpture Techniques at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, having previously taught at academies in Florence, Carrara and Milan.
His work has been presented internationally, including at the Museo Canova in Possagno, the Estorick Collection in London, the Shenzhen Biennale and the Jingdezhen Ceramics Biennale. More recently, he presented the project ITALIA at the National Museum of Slovenia in 2023 and held a solo exhibition at the Nubuke Foundation in Accra, Ghana, in 2025. ITALIA subsequently entered the permanent collection of the MIC – Museo Internazionale della Ceramica in Faenza following the PAC – Piano Arte Contemporanea 2024 award.
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