A life for art, a life dedicated to sculpture, in a studio on the outskirts of Milan which saw him daily dealing with different materials, from bronze to terracotta, to wood, carefully chosen woods, to model, file, remove and
add, to move towards absolute sobriety, the art of the sculptor of today, who eliminates what has already been done by others, as it is necessary to remove from one’s life everything that is useless, superfluous and harmful, in order to be able to cultivate what is useful, essential and beneficial for a good life. Sobriety makes the sculptor’s task its own: to remove to generate beauty. This is how Gianni Bucher Schenker reached a goal that is unparalleled today, with stages that have marked him and others that will still contribute to magnifying his CV. Forms achieved as if by miracle, or the miracle of forms. And the results of his work led him to be awarded the Grand Prix Absolute for sculpture in the Premium International Florence Seven Stars 2025 on the Gran Terrazza of Plus Florence in Florence by an international and highly qualified jury chaired by Prof. Carlo Franza; this is the jury’s motivation: “Gianni Bucher Schenker’s sculpture has established him among the most significant European artists, and the different phases of his work have appeared to most as the declination of chorality and living, sampling different materials, from wood to bronze, from marble to terracotta, in a blaze of exhibitions in various parts of Italy and Europe. His work could not fail to attract the attention of masterly criticism and a monitored interest of market. For all this and for how much more this international award can reach Gianni Bucher Schenker in his highest testimony”.
Now Bucher is on display with a series of sculptures and preparatory studies in the exhibition “Nel tempo che precede” which runs until 2 December 2025 at the ATM Foundation in Milan. Vertical and horizontal sculptures, figures that talk to each other, living life, existence, history, time and the present. In the text in the catalog it is written: “It is not time that passes, it is we who are leaving” as Luis de Gòngora asserted. The time. There is nothing so everyday and so difficult to understand. What is it exactly? Saint Augustine, to such a question, replied: “If no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to anyone who asks me, I no longer know.” Is time something that really exists? Is it linear? Circular? Irreversible? Subjective? The dominant image (of Aristotelian origin, but confirmed by Newton) depicts time as an infinite straight line along which a point flows, the present moment, which advances at a constant speed, irreversibly separating the past and
future. But is it really like that? Let’s get to the main philosophical concepts. Many have dealt with the problem of time, here are some, namely Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Bergson, Einstein and Heidegger. Aristotle “Time is the number of movement according to before and after” (Aristotle, Physics, IV, 11, 219b): this is the definition that
Aristotle gives time as a property of motion. According to Aristotle, therefore, time indicates the duration of a movement, and can only be defined in relation to the concept of becoming; be careful, time is not the change of things, but the measure of their becoming (“according to before and after”, as mentioned). Augustine he cannot agree with such a one at all 
circular vision of time. If everything repeated itself exactly the same way an infinite number of times, where would human freedom be? What would happen to free will, the one that allows man to escape sin, to choose God? Therefore time, for Augustine and all Christians, takes on a linear structure. But there’s more. In fact, Augustine notes that man never moves from the present: this is the only dimension of time that we experience, thanks to attention (which in some way prolongs the moment). So what is the past? It is nothing but memory, remembrance; and it is our soul that makes it possible.
Menhirs 2
Also for the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) time is the form of internal sense, that is, the way in which we organize our internal perceptions (our moods and everything that comes to our consciousness) according to a before and after. Time is therefore not something that “subsists by itself”: it is not something we can touch, see, take; in short, it has no real empirical existence. Looking at the world do I perhaps see time? No, I see entities, things. Nietzsche: time as eternal return Zarathustra, protagonist of Friedrich Nietzsche’s most famous work (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) offers us what is the fundamental law of the cosmos, the eternal return of the same. The rise of Zarathustra represents man’s journey towards the highest humanity, towards the superman. Bergson distinguishes between the time of science and the time of life. In short, the time of life is something concrete, internal and Bergson calls this time of life “duration”. Einstein. Against the Newtonian idea of time and space as something absolute, Einstein, in his theory of relativity (1905: special theory of relativity; 1916: general theory of relativity), shows us a relative time. In Being and Time, Heidegger for the first time he elaborates his thoughts on the problem of the meaning of being. Existence, Heidegger notes, is projected into time and, above all, into future time, since it is, by its nature, planning; and in his analysis of temporality, he harshly criticizes the traditional conception which understands time as divided into three parts (past, present, future): these are not three divided parts, but three aspects of the same thing.
The life of the universe is within the history of time measurement. Clocks are the oldest instruments, dating back around 5000 years, one is undoubtedly the sundial, instrument for measuring the passage of time thanks to the shadow produced by the sun. Then water, oil and sand clocks were built, hourglasses. In 1427 Heinrich Arnold invented the first spring clock. In 1657 Huygens manufactured the first pendulum clock. To the clocks must be added i calendarsthe first to compile a calendar were the Sumerians (around 3000 BC). The Roman calendar, copied from the Greek one, was a lunar calendar. Until the 16th century, the most used in the West was the Julian calendar (introduced by Julius Caesar). But this calendar was based on the belief that a year had exactly 365.25 days; new measurements (in 1500) showed different values: a year counted 365.2425 days. The error had led to a delay of 10 days; in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar, the one we still use today. And we come to one of the artists on display, measured on time, on history, on life, on existence. Gianni Bucher Schenker is a precious and brilliant sculptor, who has always aimed at the essential. His figures experience time, life, relationships, relationships with others. Genius, mastery, plastic discovery of forms, often fantastic and constructive – after the initial arrival at figurality and medals – full of research and experimental individuality that allow us to read, between lights and natural colors linked to the material, sculptural elements that are specified in the climate of a poetics of freedom; and of a pre-eminent formal dimension where the titanic harmony of its pure plastics move through a geometry which has found an enlightened inventor in the excavated and vigorous signs of concavity/convexity.
Carlo Franza