Lame is a series of bas-reliefs by Fausto Ferrara in satin-finished steel and paint, realized in 2025, in which surface ceases to be a background and becomes space.

The work originates from minimal and precise operations: cutting, folding, displacement, projection and recession of the plane. Matter is not constructed through accumulation, but through minute differences capable of generating depth, shadow and tension.

Light completes the Work. It moves across the surfaces, stops at the edges and gathers within the cavities, continuously transforming the perception of the bas-relief. What initially appears two-dimensional thus acquires a spatial and temporal condition: the wall does not merely support the Work; it becomes part of it.

Lame does not use bas-relief as decoration. The plane is treated as a threshold between surface and depth; the cut makes visible a space that did not previously exist. The reduction of means therefore increases the precision of the gesture: not mass, but distance; not autonomous volume, but a relationship between matter, light and void.

The series belongs to Ferrara’s research into Necessary Form, bringing to the scale of the bas-relief questions that also run through his architecture: boundary, threshold, measure, light and perception.