The Diving Platform Enrico Capanni

Enrico Capanni has created an angular brutalist folie in the form of a diving platform towering over stilled pools whose rippled glassy surface reflects the monumental structure back to the viewer. An early morning haze infuses the scene with soft pinks, and muted pastel tones as gently forested hills vanish into a first-light sky. In this artful play of light and form, Capanni makes an edifice of brutal and uncompromising concrete feel like a thing of playful whimsey. The restrained palette enhances a sensation of depeopled tranquillity, and we’re left with a scene that evokes feelings of the quiet before a storm. It’s not hard to imagine the same vista, frenetic with the throngs of people seeking relief from a hot summer’s day; children, teens, and families, scrambling, playing, climbing, diving, and splashing, but here, we have only stillness, a stolen moment before the rest of the world wakes up.