Sphere Within Sphere in Vatican. Photo credit
Arnaldo Pomodoro says that the inner ball represents the Earth and outer ball represents Christianity. The design of the internal layers which look like the gears or cogwheels of a complex machine symbolizes the fragility and complexity of the world.
“The sphere is a marvelous object, from the world of magic, wizards, whether it is of crystal or bronze, or full of water…It reflects everything around it, creating such contrasts that it sometimes is transformed, becoming invisible, leaving only its interior, tormented and corroded, full of teeth,” explained the artist. “That’s what drives me to make the spheres: breaking these perfect, magic forms in order reveal (find, discover) its internal ferment, mysterious and alive, monstrous and yet pure; so I create a discordant tension, a conflict, with the polished shine: a unity composed of incompleteness. In my sculpture, the shape of today’s world contains within itself the form of the ‘ideal city’ as conceived by the artists of the Italian Renaissance. This, in turn, contains my hopes and dreams, and those of countless other citizens of the world.”