BOOKS LINED UP on shelves can elicit strong emotions. There is the desire to know and the pleasure of availing oneself of a cultural accumulation that has already taken place. The idea that one need only extend a hand to delve into all sorts of histories, arguments, and romances offers great stimulation as well as solace. Libraries both private and public—and bookstores too—electrify and at the same time intimidate. At any moment one can encounter the mind of a writer from any epoch. This is comforting, but it also gives cause for uncertainty, as the effort required of the individual

THE WORD, the signifier that defines the word, the object the word indicates—these make up the system with which Maurizio Arcangeli always has operated. The formal correspondence between the words un quadro (a painting) or una scultura (a sculpture) and the words' component letters, created from stretchers built in the shape of vowels and consonants and covered with canvas, or carved from travertine marble, might seem like one of the extreme end points of conceptualism, comparable to Giulio Paolini's Geometric Design, 1960, where a small canvas was marked only by the geometric coordinates

THE THREE WORKS Davide Bertocchi presented here were each quite different but were subtly linked by an idea. In the gallery's single room, what first struck the viewer was Nucleo (Nucleus; all works 2000), a large sphere in dark fiberglass-reinforced plastic. On its surface, at eye level, was a hole large enough to accommodate the viewer's head. The interior of the sphere was completely dark, and this “portable abyss” (the artist's own words) could be experienced as long as one remained silent. As soon as there was any sound, a distinct echo reverberated, due to an acoustical device inserted