Cross Shoots

CROSS SHOOTS

Sculpture

CROSS SHOOTS is composed of black frosted and molded glass elements fixed onto a wooden cross structure. Presented in Andrea Morucchio’s solo exhibition Back in Black at Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice (2011), the work establishes a clear conceptual and formal connection with the exhibition’s central themes: the use of black as both material and metaphor, and the dialogue between fragility and resistance intrinsic to glass.

Beyond the immediate associations that the form of the cross evokes, the work engages with broader historical and symbolic meanings. Among the fundamental geometric figures, the cross is one of the oldest archetypes, predating Christianity. It represents the union of the vertical and horizontal dimensions—the connection between heaven and earth—and serves as a tool of orientation, linking the four cardinal points.

Morucchio reinterprets this ancient ideogram as a reflection on contemporary disorientation. Cross Shoots does not aim to reaffirm a stable symbol but to question its validity in a world where references appear uncertain.

Technically, the artist employs a process rooted in ancient practice: melting sand and mineral powders at high temperatures to forge dense, opaque black glass. This choice enhances the work’s conceptual tension between light and opacity, structure and dissolution.

In the context of Back in Black, Cross Shoots stands as a synthesis of Morucchio’s sculptural research—an intersection of form, material, and meaning, where the cross becomes not a religious emblem, but an instrument for exploring the limits of perception and orientation in contemporary experience.