Damián Ortega, Miracolo Italiano, 2005

The VW Beetle is not the only vehicle Damián Ortega has used as art materials. In Miracolo Italiano Ortega presented three Vespa scooters in various states of wholeness. The scooter leading the parade is whole but the ones behind it are exploding out into the space, with the second one showing early signs of breaking up and the third one as fragmented as the Beetle in Cosmic Stuff. Like the Beetle, the Vespa is a twentieth century icon and Miracolo Italiano was made for an exhibition in it’s home city of Turin

This work is fascinating in a very similar way to Cosmic Thing but with the added element of allowing us to get a more complete picture of the process of constructing and deconstructing the scooter. There’s also something that really intrigues me about the way the final – fragmented – scooter seems to become something other than itself when seen from the front but seen in isolation its scooterness is evident once again.