Just days after the death of the great Italian artist, Lucia Antista invites us to rediscover his magnificent Labyrinth in Milan, now reopened to the public after 14 years of closure.
Arnaldo Pomodoro’s labyrinth is a place outside of time. A narrow staircase leads underground, away from light and noise. One enters in silence, one at a time. Inspired by the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first great epic poem in human history (circa 2000 BC), Arnaldo Pomodoro’s Labyrinth lies beneath the Fondazione Fendi headquarters in Milan, and after 14 years of closure it is once again open to visitors.
It’s a space to traverse, to measure with the body. A total, immersive work, built as a long 170-meter corridor that unfolds into rooms, passages and secret chambers, made of fiberglass, the material that recalls his artistic beginnings.
It is not, in reality, a labyrinth in the strict sense – there are no crossroads, no possibility of getting lost – but the sensation is nonetheless one of gradual disorientation. The walls are entirely sculpted: bas-reliefs, inscriptions, mechanical structures, rough surfaces. The bronze that covers the rooms changes color with the light, which is artificial, directional, theatrical. Each environment refers to a different time, to a remote civilization, to an archaic or technological culture. One moves from a hall inspired by Mithraism to a space reminiscent of the control panels of a power plant, from a chamber with ritualistic features to a wall that seems to emerge from an abandoned factory. Every surface has the density of compressed narrative.
Pomodoro, born in Morciano di Romagna in 1926, began working on the labyrinth project in the 1990s, as part of a broader reflection on the possibility of constructing a work that could literally be entered. The idea of creating “walkable environments” had already emerged in some of his monumental installations, but it is here that it finds its most complete form. The Labyrinth is neither sculpture nor architecture: it is a three-dimensional work that includes the spectator and makes them an integral part. The space is not only to be observed, but to be experienced: with the body, with the senses, with memory.
In its entirety, the path recalls the ancient myth of the labyrinth as an initiatory place. One moves within a closed system, sometimes oppressive, where matter seems to have taken over form. The surfaces are never smooth: they are interrupted, corroded, full of grafts, mechanical traces, symbols. It is an abstract scenography that suggests the possibility of action but suspends it in time. The visitor moves like an actor waiting to enter the scene, but the scene never comes: it is frozen, held back. It is the heart of the labyrinth, the point where spatiality becomes vision, and architecture becomes language. In a certain sense, it is also a tribute to fiction, to the construction of worlds: a way of saying that memory too, like theater, is a scenic device.
But it is the entire journey, in reality, that functions as a great visual metaphor. The idea of the labyrinth – which in Pomodoro is never only mythological, but also political, existential – becomes a way to represent the complexity of human history. The surfaces are full of signs: lost alphabets, industrial matrices, technical objects, references to disappeared or imaginary civilizations. The ancient and contemporary merge, as if the future had already been buried in the past. Pomodoro does not tell a story, but shows its imprint on metal: scars, abrasions, fractures.
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