Peperino

Peperino is the volcanic tuff of the Sutri countryside — soft enough to carve, hard enough to remember the chisel forever. It is the material that pulled Paul out of his city studios and into the Lazio earth. He worked with it for over twenty years.

What attracts him is the bruteness with grain: the stone refuses to be smooth, refuses to be polite. He plays with that refusal — grouping blocks like small architectures, leaving cut edges raw, sometimes setting them on rusted iron rods that tilt the whole composition off-axis.

The peperino works span from the late 1990s through the mid-2010s. The earlier pieces are more sculptural, almost figurative; the later pieces flatten and stack, as if the stone is trying to become a wall and a column at once.