Umberto Cavenago, “Centrifugo”, 2020, Peccioli, Viale Risorgimento
Once a year, Peccioli becomes an important destination for cycling, as the traditional “Coppa Sabatini” is held in its territory, an annual race since 1952. For this reason, the municipal administration of Peccioli asked Umberto Cavenago to create a work on this theme. For the positioning of the sculpture, a particularly significant area for the competition was indicated: the space delimited by a hairpin bend that cyclists tackle uphill. It is just a few hundred meters from the finish, near the center of Peccioli.
Made in Cor-Ten steel, Centrifugal is almost a parallelepiped, empty inside, offset in its shape and longitudinally decomposed (so that it can easily bend thirty degrees inside the bend). It lies on four large wheels: two on the ground and two almost raised from the ground due to the inclination.
The shape of the work, although characterized by a minimal essentiality, unequivocally recalls the cycling race, evoking with its position and its location the figure of the racer inclined in the bed.
The title of the work refers to the centrifugal force that comes into play when a vehicle speeds along a curve. A physical factor that even a runner must take into account: the cyclist bends in the curvilinear section with his bicycle inwards to compensate for the push toward the outside.
The inclination of Centrifugal becomes visually effective when the work is observed in the moment when the passage of the racers takes place in that precise stretch of the path. It is at that point that Centrifugal ideally enters the race, at the moment when its position coincides with that of the cyclists who race parallel to it.
More info: Fondazione Peccioliper
