SNAIL

CORRADO ROSA – 2012

It is not unusual, while out walking in the pine wood of Pur, to come upon snails with their ‘houses’ on their backs, dragging themselves over the grass, pine needles, river sand and woodland earth, leaving behind a silvery, sticky trail.

‘Ever since I was a child, I’ve always thought of these molluscs, at once armoured and defenceless due to their slowness, as so much in love with their surroundings and life itself that they actually remain stuck to things,’ says the artist, who also points out that the snail prefers to take on the challenge of the stone that it finds in its path rather than just go around it. Bending and soldering old scrap metal rusted with time, Corrado Rosa has built a huge snail that, having passed a boulder, is heading for the water of a nearby mountain river. The colours of the snail evoke those of the earth, bark, dead leaves and old iron. The rocks and granite are what nature has preserved, the iron that which human beings return to nature.