In the fragmented landscape of the Custonaci hills, the remnants of quarrying activity emerge like erratic boulders—discarded stones that have merged with the terrain to the point of blurring the boundaries between nature and human intervention. It is within this context that MANGIATUTTO, a work by Nicola Martini, takes shape: a sculptural and conceptual investigation into the relationship between extraction, matter, and memory.
Two formless blocks of Perlato Siciliano, sourced from the quarries near Monte Cofano, serve as the starting point for a process of extreme erosion, carried out using hole cutters of varying diameters. The stone, pierced in every direction to the brink of structural collapse, opens itself to the possibility of another reading—not as mere industrial waste, but as a resilient body, imbued with geological time and symbolic tension. The act is not destructive but ritualistic: each perforation is an opening into the time of the stone, into its silent geological becoming.
The work thus becomes a meditation on substance and its memory: every centimeter of stone is an archive, a thinking geology that precedes the human one. Martini leads us into the void, into the subtracted volume, into the unsaid of the rock. Crucial to this process is the encounter with local artisans—skilled hands, familiar with stone as a living organism, who understand its hardness and veins, its sounds and fractures. The intervention is completed by the paradoxical insertion of three cylinders in Sicilian red jasper, a precious marble, which vainly attempts to recompose what has been eroded. The gesture is impossible, yet necessary: it marks the fracture, the loss, the memory. And it reminds us that every rock is a geological archive, speaking of remote, pre-anthropic eras, putting our presence into perspective.
MANGIATUTTO is a work that inhabits the void, walks trough it, and makes it visible. It is a threshold between geology and history, between human gesture and cosmic duration.

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Artworks:
01. Nicola Martini, MANGIATUTTO (1), 2025, Perlato di Sicilia, Diaspro rosso / Perlato di Sicilia, diaspro rosso / Perlato di Sicilia, red jasper, 140x134x161 cm, Parco Cerriolo, via Circonvallazione Nord, Custonaci (TP)

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02. Nicola Martini, MANGIATUTTO (2), 2025, 120x140x150 cm, Parco Cerriolo, via Circonvallazione Nord, Custonaci (TP)

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Nicola Martini (Florence, Italy, 1984) lives and works in Milan. His sculptural practice is grounded in various processes of destructuralization and embrace an object-oriented philosophical approach. His works—made from organic and inorganic liquids, minerals, metals, plastics, archival or repurposed materials—reflect a unique discourse on history, durations of time, and perception.
His installations are conceived as spaces of experience, inviting the viewer to engage with these themes. In 2024, he was awarded the Henraux Sculpture Prize, and in 2021 received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. His solo exhibitions include: 1669, Clima, Milan (IT, 2024); Testimone Perpetua, Toast, Florence (IT, 2022); Appunti dall’Inframezzo, Clima, Milan (IT, 2021); And Welded Skin, Galerie Philipp Zollinger, Zurich (CH, 2020); Molten, Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Berlin (DE, 2018); The Sober Day, kaufmann repetto, New York (US, 2015); Sippe, kaufmann repetto, Milan (IT, 2013); Nervo Vago, Museo Marino Marini, Florence (IT, 2012). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including: Henraux Sculpture Prize, Fondazione Henraux, Querceta (IT, 2024); Panorama, curated by Cristiana Perrella, L’Aquila (IT, 2023); La Collezione Impermanente, curated by Lorenzo Giusti, GAMeC, Bergamo (IT, 2021); Performativity, Centrale Fies, Dro (IT, 2020); #80|#90, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto, Villa Medici, Rome (IT, 2019); Black Hole, GAMeC, Bergamo (IT, 2018); Intuition, curated by Axel Vervoordt and Daniela Ferretti, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (IT, 2017); A occhi chiusi, gli occhi sono straordinariamente aperti, curated by Luca Lo Pinto, Quadriennale di Roma (IT, 2016).