Nivola’s meticulously crafted inventions, made of wood and metal, reveal the precision and elegance of a watch-maker.
Nivola’s meticulously crafted inventions, made of wood and metal, reveal the precision and elegance of a watch-maker. His works are mostly small in size, yet they evoke a monumental scale as with a Chinese scholar’s rock or a medieval illumination. Each piece conveys, paradoxically, the illusion of grand forms within the intimate framework of a hand-held object. A humorous irony enlivens Nivola’s sculptures where the machinery of strings and tuning pegs seem to suggest a functionality only to prove poignantly implausible. However, in his combining of elements, Nivola creates surprising visual forms. The artist’s process is improvisational. He does not work from blueprints of drawings or any preconceived image. Only a nascent, structural idea guides his initial decisions and it often gets revised or replaced several times before a piece is completed. He edits each work more or less radically and spontaneously over time.
