Speme – Hope

In his Speme series, Thilo Reich isolates and reimagines the physical outcome of a ubiquitous human ritual of hope. By turning three times on one’s heel on the testicles of the “Torino Bull” floor mosaic in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, good luck is said to be yours. Over many decades of this popular secular tradition has worn a circular depression into the floor of the mosaic roughly 4cm in depth—the tactile result of countless wishes.

Reich has 3D scanned this circular imprint and cast it using a bespoke terrazzo created from rocks and discarded building debris gathered on walks throughout the city of Milan. The surface of this block is then ground to the exact specifications of the Bull’s man-made indentation and polished to reveal the entirely new material from his cumulative findings, alluding to the cultural and architectural history of the city embedded in the individual pieces. Reich then places the circular terrazzo object in a metallic frame that embodies the eclectic architectural aesthetics and proportions of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II itself. This resulting cylindrical structure elevates the uncanny object from its origins on the Galleria floor to a new place of pause and reflection; a physical embodiment of human hopes and dreams.

The Speme works measure 37x37x50cm