Metamorfosi, a dense and luminous body of work by the Italian sculptor Massimiliano Pelletti, has relaunched the recently renovated Bowman Sculpture in St James. The exhibition returns to the language of stone and successfully works with and around it, especially natural flaws and formations occurring within the stone itself.
Pelletti has been edging classical form into new psychological territory. His first solo outing, at Bowman, Eredità, traced the lineage that connected his own hand to the traditions of Pietrasanta, the home of his grandfather, who famously restored Michelangelo’s Pietà when it was attacked with a hammer in the 1970s. Metamorfosi feels different—less about inheritance, more about an evolution in his career. The title fits: everything here is in flux, from the fractured torsos to the myths that refuse to go unnoticed.
Pelletti works in materials that seem to suit him—onyx, fossil marble, translucent crystal—and rather than forcing polish, he listens to their fault lines. “The stone collaborates,” he says, and you believe him. The fractures aren’t oversights; they’re the sculpture’s core.
One of he show’s centrepieces, African Ares, commands a spirit caught mid-transformation. Carved from ivory onyx streaked with veins, it merges a Roman warrior with an African headdress. The result is neither hybrid nor harmony—it’s tension incarnate, a reminder that culture, like geology, forms under pressure.
Across the room, Viscere strips back the ideal. A female torso, part flesh, part mineral exposure, stands half-finished as if the figure were deciding whether to emerge or retreat. Light hits the crystalline veins inside the cut stone, and for a moment, the work seems to breathe.
What makes Pelletti persuasive is his refusal to treat antiquity as something to copy. He’s not polishing the past; he’s cracking it open to see what new gods might crawl out. Each sculpture carries that mix of devotion and defiance—a conversation between history and the human condition as it is now, fractured, luminous, unfinished.
Metamorfosi emanates conviction. Pelletti reminds us that sculpture, when carved honestly, isn’t about freezing the human form in time; it’s about letting the stone’s nature change and evolve under the guidance of a masterful artist. In the end, these are exquisite objects which need to be seen up close. I highly recommend this exhibition.
Under Mica Bowman’s direction, Bowman Sculpture has shifted its footing from historic reverence toward a more here-and-now conversation—Rodin still anchors the space. Still, the gallery now seems to be finding its footing within the contemporary discourse. The new rooms are cleaner, brighter, and more state-of-the-art as you would expect from a gallery in this part of London. – PCR October 2025
Massimiliano Pelletti ‘Metamorfosi’ is at Bowman Sculpture from 9 October to 7 November 2025.