Leonardo Cumbo is one of 70 artists selected from more than 200 sculptors from all over the world who have applied for participation in the important contemporary sculpture exhibition “Sculptures By the Sea”, which will be held in Cottesloe from 3 to 20 March 2023. The Sculpture by the Sea exhibition in Sydney and Perth is the largest annual outdoor sculpture exhibition in the world.
The artist from Caltanissetta will participate in the aforementioned review with two works. One of the imposing dimensions, “Trap for Dreams”, is intended for an outdoor space and another smaller one is entitled “Dreaming to Fly”.
The first work depicts a large elastic net that, suddenly emerging from the subsoil, rushes towards a large soap bubble floating in the sky, capturing it. The sculpture is made up of eight long red stainless steel tubes and a large mirror-polished stainless steel sphere on which the same net is reflected which seems to capture images of the surrounding landscape and of the visitors themselves. For Leonardo, the air is the main substance of which the work is made, which takes its cue from the nature that inspires it and, in this case, from the observation of the behaviour of the chameleon which throws, with a lightning action, its long, sticky tongue against its small flying prey, such as a dragonfly, catching it.
“Dreaming to Fly” is instead the title of the second sculpture in bronze, Roman travertine, stainless steel and gold that Leonardo will exhibit indoors at the “Sculpture Inside” exhibition, again as part of the “Sculptures By the Sea” review. It depicts the ecstatic face of a child who, disguised as a pilot, blows on the tail of a paper aeroplane delicately held in the palm of his hand. The artist wants to underline the importance that play, based on the use of simple and tangible objects, has in the healthy development of creativity and imagination. Attitudes are often destined to disappear or to be mortified in adulthood.
