'My attention was caught by a series of small transparent sculptures, set on a shelf. They looked like artificial crystals, made of plexiglass; they refracted light in unexpected modes, reconfiguring the surrounding space. The critic Vittorio Fagone called them “tropi” [tropes], a term indicating something with the power to expand the potentiality of matter. These structures—the premises of How do you feel? —are not enclosed in themselves; through a game of reflections they open outwards, reshaping and complicating the environment. Despite their minimalist allure, the “tropes” are conceptually far from the concluded and industrial forms of American Minimalism (but the years are approximately the same: Del Ponte realized her first “tropes” in 1965, while the Primary Structures exhibition at the Jewish Museum in NY was held just one year later). “In 1967 I saw in Los Angeles a show titled American Sculpture of the Sixties. I remember it really interested me. I bought the catalogue. The works by these American artists seemed to deal with issues that were dear to me at the time,” she told me leafing through the pages of the old publication.' uit: When art explores the fabric of matter. Frederico Florian
