Mario Merz

Igloo di Giap (Giap’s Igloo) is the first of more than 100 igloos that Mario Merz would make during his long career. An iconic cipher, the igloo is for Merz a symbol of nomadic and temporary living, archaic yet also contemporary; it is also a metaphor for the cosmos in which opposites coexist. Each igloo uses different materials and elements according to the place where it was made so that the same igloo is never repeated twice. Exhibited in 1968 in a group exhibition in Rome, Igloo di Giap consists of a metal structure on which clay loaves are affixed along with a neon sign bearing, in the artist’s handwriting, a famous phrase by Vietnamese general Võ Nguyên Giáp: “If the enemy concentrates, it loses ground; if it disperses, it loses strength.” The phrase, if read in full, forces the viewer to make three turns around the igloo in a circular motion that recalls the spiral, another of Merz’s stylistic hallmarks, and translates his conception of reality as a process field where energy concentrates and expands according to the rhythms of the living and the cosmos. The artist has said of this work, “The idea is round. See how the idea of the general is neutralised. If you follow the saying, you go back to its beginning and see how it rolls up and subsides. There is no clarification, no logic, no progress. It is a contained dynamic force.”