Vittorio Messina’s work—site-specific sculpture and installations that engage various questions about architecture and scale—is rooted, both formally and conceptually, in the intersection between the languages of Minimalism and arte povera. Rather than merely synthesizing these vocabularies, however, Messina achieves a highly inventive stance, one that is extremely personal and poetic.

In his recent exhibition, each space of the gallery contained one work that was made specifically for the show. A stylized human silhouette, constructed from blocks of a prefab material called “ytong,” welcomed