Baruch Spinoza identifies God with fundamental substance thus, Matter is substance. Therefore, Matter is never subordinated to Spirit and its displays: Matter is Spirit, indeed. Paolo Di Nozzi advocates strongly for the revolutionary simplicity of this philosophy.
I always thought that Paolo Di Nozzi’s being a chemical engineer is related to a very specific vision of the world, of nature and arts: in fact, what is chemistry if not the discipline which studies Matter’s intimate structure?

Coming from this perspective, it is not difficult to understand how the artist devoted the majority of his life to industrial chemistry, and then to art. As it is not strange the relationship between art and medicine, and between art and science, as well.

If we take the time to consider and think about these principles, we would have many more antibodies to resist the infection caused by scientism and technicism, which aggravates the division between knowledge and doing.

Nowadays, this infection thrives just like a pandemic: there are no tools anymore to resist the spreading of an arrogant single way of thinking based on market orientation, scientism and technic power. If we exclude, of course, the irrational and grotesque answers of who believes that the earth is flat, or the negationists and anti-vaxxers. 

The tangible materials’ appearance and multiple shapes are the primary focus of Paolo Di Nozzi’s work in the Plastic Arts. The Matter is far from being just concrete or physical things: we are used to consider objects as opposed to spirituality, but Paolo Di Nozzi’s work, paradoxically elaborates a perspective in which the inner spirituality of materials can be discovered again, questioning the Western opposite dualism of Spirit versus Matter.

Given that Hermeneutics has been imposed by the overcoming of the Dualism, since Plato and Descartes until now, the artist had the opportunity to poetize metal springs; it could appear as an odd art form, but it is not. Di Nozzi’s unpredictable metal volutes which bend the space in plastic shapes, in a truthful expression of the best Informal art, captivate art experts who have deep knowledge of the history of recycled materials used to make art (Ettore Colla was the leading figure of this kind of Art) and Arte Povera’s admirers, as well as non-expert audience.

Paolo Di Nozzi’s favourite materials, between many (plastic pipes, nets, rubber), are broken or worn out metal springs. The energy left within these springs is released in new shapes, mostly depending on the ravages of time.

These materials are not passive and dead, but they have an independent inner voice able to communicate an oxymoronic vitality (what is vitality as characteristic of a lifeless material, as steel is, if not and oxymoron?).
Paolo Di Nozzi, as Volcano does, deals with the Matter, so he is witness and participant of Eros and Thanatos’ Myth: extremes in between which life creates, reproduces, ends itself and it is born again; In the same way Di Nozzi redirects the energy restored from the materials he uses. Steel is not a passive element in this dialogue, but it interacts with the artist.

Consequently, every work of Paolo Di Nozzi is the plastic representation of the dialectic which is developed by him with the Matter.

Surprisingly so, the complexity of these events resolves eventually in the simplicity of his artwork which is displayed as pearls held together by the same thread. This thread represents the daily effort of a sculptor who strives to achieve the creation of a masterpiece through his ever-renewed energies. Because of this effort Di Nozzi’s artwork becomes philosophy showing that there is no thought without doing and there is no doing without thought.
The shimmering German with the long beard wrote: Practice: Theory: Practice. Matter: Spirit: Matter, mix together in the daily study that the artist carries in a unified process that gives appealing shapes as a result.

Di Nozzi’s artwork can be approached by the audience without the need of a background in philosophy, since the strength of his art is making complexity easy to understand: it is possible to grasp the meaning of it with one sight. This journey through the shapes of Di Nozzi’s metal springs is not only possible with just a mirror, but extremely fulfilling as well.