Piero Golia’s installation Still Life (Rotating device) (2024) suspends the euphoric moment when anything and everything is possible. Exhibited for the first time in the Unlimited sector of Art Basel 2025, the work centers on a decommissioned casino roulette wheel that has been modified so that it spins ceaselessly, never allowing its ball to fall upon a winning number. Through Golia’s singular vision, the anticipatory moment—before our hopes and dreams are realized (or abandoned) by fate—remains in continuous deferral.

Rather than exhibiting a single painting or sculpture at the prestigious presentation of monumental works at Art Basel Unlimited, the artist instead conceived of his immersive installation as a proposition: to create a conceptual “piece” of reality. Upon entering the space through crimson velour curtains and then experiencing the plush scarlet-hued rug and matching walls, the viewer is transported to an alternate world where time seems not to unfold linearly but to turn onto itself in an eternal loop.

Since moving to the United States from Italy, Golia began playing roulette regularly. He started in the casinos of Atlantic City, traveling from Chinatown in lower Manhattan, and later made frequent sojourns to Las Vegas from his Los Angeles home. Golia was drawn to both the meticulous construction of the game’s pieces, as well as its logic and strategy. The sumptuously lacquered roulette wheel is divided into numbered compartments which are further allocated into red and black color ways—all components that can be gambled upon to place a winning bet.

Gambling is, in the artist’s mind, about discipline rather than pure luck; the patterns of the game can be rationalized, learned, and understood. This notion of making sense of repetitions likely stems from the artist’s early training in chemical engineering, a field of study that transforms raw materials into usable products. By engineering the roulette wheel so the ball remains in perpetual, but consistently erratic rotation, Golia subverts the principles of the game so that there are no winners or losers. As intended by the artist, this gesture grips the audience in a state of absolute potentiality.

For Golia, gambling—like art—explores the relationship between faith and chance, a theme that he has touched upon repeatedly throughout his career. He has made sculptures and paintings based on the material remains from actual car accidents, and has incorporated participatory or improvisational elements in works as varied as Luminous Sphere (2010), a light situated on the roof of the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles that turns on only when the artist is in town, and The Painter (2016), a robotic apparatus rigged to make painterly marks on a canvas based on the presence of a viewer moving through an exhibition space.

In a 2008 interview, Golia referenced the French Enlightenment–era philosopher Blaise Pascal, who famously described the notion of faith as a gamble. While Pascal discusses risk in terms of religious belief, Golia links the concept to his art making; he often creates situations in which a live element can open up the work to unplanned outcomes. Speaking about his practice, Golia has noted, “it is only about chance. It’s the life of a gambler. If I make it, I make it big.” In staging an everlasting moment of anticipation in Still Life (Rotating device), the artist creates a perspective-altering impact for the viewer—monumental in its ability to transform our perception of the world around us. “Monumentality has something to do with time and eternity. Art should be monumental,” he has slyly asserted.