Cinquanta6dime

Always interested in art, not as a connoisseur but as a true artist, and involved in the narration of his native lands in the footsteps of Norman Douglas; the original interlocutor of Pierre Restany, a friend to many painters, sculptors and architects, a grammarian with an inclination to express himself in the transformative cycles of the sign; a theoretician and a poet, Marcello Séstito refuses – apparently, at least – to accept modernity. His latest book, with 56 self-portraits, may be the definitive resting place of a theoretical work that began more than three decades ago. A work that has constantly unfolded in a series of books of notable conceptual importance and a high impact on aesthetics. Having known Marcello Séstito for so many years, I believe that this work is none other than a welcoming harbour where he can pause briefly before embarking on another circumnavigation of the increasingly rough seas of contemporary architecture. Architecture that today presents too many contrasting directions to be understood in its entirety without interpretations, like those Marcello Séstito might propose, which have the ability to reduce this multiplicity to oppositions that are both less numerous and more explicit, and – more relevant still – true and effective.