News

ĂQUAE NATUROGRAFIE

ROBERTO GHEZZI SOLO EXHIBITION

Fondaco dei Tedeschi – Venezia

dal 3 febbraio al 1^ maggio 2023

PROGETTO E ALLESTIMENTO A CURA DI START CULTURA E ECONTEMPORARY

REALIZZATO CON LA COLLABORAZIONE DI FONDACO DEI TEDESCHI

CON IL PATROCINIO DI REGIONE VENETO E COMUNE DI VENEZIA

CON IL CONTRIBUTO DI REGIONE FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA,

AUTORITÀ DI SISTEMA PORTUALE DEL MARE ADRIATICO SETTENTRIONALE (VENEZIA)

IL PARTENARIATO DI CNR IOM (TRIESTE), CNR ISMAR (VENEZIA)

E DELLA RISERVA NATURALE STATALE OASI WWF DI VALLE AVERTO

VENEZIA – Naturografie è un’iniziativa artistica in cui arte, uomo e ambiente entrano in consonante e originale connessione. La mostra Ăcque Naturografie. Roberto Ghezzi solo exhibition che si inaugura il 3 febbraio a Venezia nella prestigiosa sede del Fondaco dei Tedeschi – dove resterà visitabile fino al prossimo 1^ maggio – è l’approdo finale di una ricognizione che l’artista contemporaneo Roberto Ghezzi ha intrapreso ormai da qualche anno lungo l’arco costiero dell’alto Adriatico: dopo il litorale del Friuli Venezia Giulia, le coste di Slovenia e Croazia, il progetto è arrivato nella Laguna di Venezia con la realizzazione delle opere più recenti, protagoniste della mostra.

Si possono definire dei veri e propri autoritratti di Laguna, in cui artista e natura disegnano insieme affascinanti vedute astratte e contemporanee, le opere che Ghezzi ha realizzato in questo progetto artistico – scientifico oggetto dell’esposizione veneziana, una sorta di “sindoni” d’autore dove l’ambiente anfibio e la natura terracquea si raccontano in modo sorprendente. Se vogliamo capire a fondo la filosofia creativa delle naturografie dobbiamo partire da una affermazione dello stesso Roberto Ghezzi, all’apparenza semplice, ma che ribalta i canoni e i punti di vista: “Le opere non rappresentano il paesaggio, sono il paesaggio”.L’artista, infatti, nel corso degli anni, ha abbandonato la rappresentazione della natura per intraprendere con lei la strada del dialogo, si è fatto artigiano con l’ideazione e realizzazione di particolari supporti di tessuto, tele bianche su cui essa possa raffigurarsi liberamente.

Per la creazione delle naturografie l’artista toscano sceglie il luogo dell’installazione e la tipologia di tessuto da utilizzare, che viene lasciato parzialmente immerso nell’acqua, demandando così al tempo e alla natura stessa il completamento dell’opera. La luce, il vento e la pioggia, le piante e gli organismi che vivono in quelle acque agiscono sulle tele per creare paesaggi vivi e sempre diversi: si generano così opere che non rappresentano semplicemente il paesaggio, ma lo sono. I lavori di Ghezzi sono a tutti gli effetti “materia organica su tela”, come li definisce lui stesso: «i preparati naturali che utilizzo per catalizzare la vita sul tessuto innescano sempre, a contatto con il “luogo”, una piccola scintilla dalla quale poi segue il resto».

Per la realizzazione delle opere in mostra a Venezia, Ghezzi ha applicato la sua particolare tecnica al largo delle acque della laguna veneta, tra l’Oasi naturale di Valle Averto fino alle aree più urbanizzate dell’Arsenale di Venezia e alle barene “rinaturalizzate” (a cura del Provveditorato Interregionale per le opere pubbliche per il Veneto, Trentino Alto Adige e Friuli Venezia Giulia con la collaborazione dell’Autorità Portuale del Mare Adriatico Settentrionale – Venezia).

Al Fondaco dei Tedeschi si potrà ammirare il risultato di queste installazioni lagunari: le grandi tele appese a scendere dal soffitto sveleranno, come arazzi di un tempo lontano, opere fatte della stessa sostanza della Laguna. All’apparenza pregne di materia, eppure leggere e delicatissime, ci restituiscono tutto il loro equilibrio instabile. Il mondo dentro le tele di Roberto Ghezzi si muove anche stando fermo, crediamo di conoscerlo ma in realtà non lo abbiamo mai visto, un “mondo nuovo” che arte e scienza assieme ci stanno rivelando. La partnership con il Fondaco dei Tedeschi nasce dalla stima nei confronti di Roberto Ghezzi e del suo progetto artistico oltre che dalla condivisione profonda da parte del department store veneziano del valore della sostenibilità ambientale, in particolare di quella del delicato ecosistema lagunare.

Le naturografie sono, infatti, anche inconsapevoli matrici di raccolta che fotografano l’ecosistema in cui vengono immerse, un prezioso strumento di mappatura e monitoraggio del territorio e della sua biodiversità: un aspetto che ben racconta dell’adesione al progetto del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, con CNR ISMAR (Venezia) e CNR IOM (Trieste). L’azione artistica unita al focus scientifico ci invitano a riflessioni su tematiche estremamente attuali quali la sostenibilità ambientale, la crisi climatica, il ruolo centrale della scienza nella preservazione e conservazione dell’ambiente, l’etica nella produzione e nei consumi.

CNR ISMAR – grazie alle scansioni realizzate con il microscopio elettronico SEM-FIB di CNR IOM -ha anche prodotto un accurato studio sulle tele che Ghezzi ha installato e recuperato dalla Laguna in vista della mostra, che ha chiamato “Naturografie: un dialogo possibile tra Arte e Scienza”. «La vita permea ogni ambiente», si spiega nella relazione. «Nei mari e nelle lagune la incontriamo libera nell’acqua – e prende il nome di necton o di plancton – così come nei fondali e su qualsiasi struttura sommersa – e prende il nome dibenthos. È quest’ultimo gruppo il protagonista del presente dialogo tra arte e natura». «Da uno sguardo di insieme ad una delle tele che saranno esposte in mostra – rimasta per alcuni mesi immersa nella laguna, in modo che la natura ci dipingesse sopra la propria storia – si osserva facilmente una sequenza di fasce orizzontali più o meno numerose, alcune più strette ed altre più ampie, ciascuna caratterizzata da un pattern relativamente omogeneo. È possibile anche identificare una zonazione verticale, pur ristretta in pochi decimetri di estensione. Ad uno sguardo più ravvicinato, il pattern di ciascuna fascia emerge come il prodotto di una specifica colonizzazione biologica, sommata ad eventuali effetti degli agenti chimici e fisici. Le specie insediate presentano dimensioni, forme e funzioni estremamente diverse. Ciò che si osserva sono organismi macroscopici vegetali e animali, in particolare la copertura di specie sessili, ossia ancorate alla tela, insieme a tracce e vestigia di vario tipo lasciate da altri organismi sia macroscopici che microscopici: biofilm e biocostruzioni, processi erosivi e degradativi. Come a riprodurre una sequenza di ambienti terrestri, passiamo da condizioni comparabili ad una steppa arida ad altre di folta copertura, un bosco in miniatura composto però sia da vegetali che da animali, in cui convivono organismi diversi (da quelli capaci di fotosintesi – produttori primari – a specie che se ne nutrono dedicandosi al pascolo, detritivori consumatori di organismi morti, filtratori che raccolgono il loro cibo dall’acqua e infine predatori più o meno feroci)» […] «Nelle lagune i fattori ambientali in gioco sono numerosi e spesso caratterizzati da cambiamenti intensi e repentini nello spazio e nel tempo. I più importanti sono temperatura, salinità, ossigenazione, ricambio idrico, luce, nutrienti, tessitura dei sedimenti, contenuto in sostanza organica e tempi di esposizione all’aria. A questi fattori si aggiungono le diverse forme di inquinamento e le modifiche dell’ambiente fisico e biologico ad opera dell’uomo, sintetizzate nel termine “impatto antropico”. Nel contesto nord Adriatico la marea è un fattore chiave nel governare le forme della laguna e strutturare le comunità biologiche. Naturalmente, l’effetto delle maree si manifesta quando il substrato è vincolato ad una quota assoluta, mentre quando è sospeso ad una struttura galleggiante prevalgono gli effetti delle onde, determinando una zonazione comparabile ma più compressa. Emerge un tema relativo alle differenze tra la laguna interna, verso la terraferma ed i fiumi, e gli ambiti più prossimi al mare, e più in generale alla varietà degli ambienti lagunari».

Classe 1978, Roberto Ghezzi ha frequentato l’Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze. Dagli anni Novanta espone con regolarità in personali e collettive, in Italia e all’estero. Attivo in premi e concorsi, ha ottenuto positivo e crescente riscontro di pubblico e critica, nonché di galleristi e collezionisti. Nel corso della sua ventennale carriera matura un disegno concettuale che, muovendo da riflessioni e sperimentazioni sulla natura, a partire dalla pittura, trova espressione in un corpus di lavori inediti, da lui stesso denominati, mediante un neologismo, naturografia©. Ha effettuato decine di residenze artistiche, ricerche sperimentali e installazioni ambientali, oltre che in Italia, anche in luoghi remoti del pianeta come Alaska, Islanda, Sudafrica, Norvegia, Tunisia e Patagonia. Si è da poco conclusa la residenza artistica in Groenlandia. (www.robertoghezzi.it)

LE NATUROGRAFIE. All’avvio del suo atto artistico, Ghezzi affronta sempre un attento studio preliminare dei luoghi in cui avverrà la creazione. Li seleziona e li mappa secondo le loro caratteristiche estetiche, fisiche, chimiche, biologiche per passare alla scelta del materiale, ossia il tessuto più adatto da installare, e lo tratta in modo bio-compatibile e a impatto zero con amidi e farine in modo da favorire l’azione dei sedimenti (terre, sabbie, sali), degli organismi vegetali e animali (alghe, piante, funghi, batteri, microrganismi, animali), in una parola della natura. I tessuti vengono poi collocati su supporti lignei e immersi in terra o in acqua per un periodo che varia, a seconda del luogo, da poche settimane a qualche mese. Ghezzi a questo punto lascia che sia la Natura (acqua, terra, aria, organismi viventi, elementi atmosferici, lo scorrere del tempo) ad agire sulle tele, a disegnare i propri paesaggi, a lasciare i propri segni o i propri vuoti. Durante il periodo di immersione le installazioni vengono monitorate periodicamente per verificarne le condizioni e quando l’artista ritiene che sia giunto il momento ideale in cui la creazione si compie, in cui il bilanciamento armonico tra il progetto dell’uomo e l’azione della Natura arrivano a compimento e producono l’opera, procede al prelievo. I tessuti vengono asciugati, stabilizzati e predisposti per l’esposizione al pubblico. Le Naturografiediventano quindi rappresentazioni artistiche dell’ecosistema in cui sono state installate e possono essere esteticamente molto diverse tra loro a seconda delle caratteristiche del luogo, della stagione, della durata dell’immersione. Le Naturografie, però, non sono soltanto un’originale rappresentazione della Natura, ma sono anche rappresentazione dei processi chimici, fisici, biologici messi in atto da terre, acque, sabbie, batteri, protozoi, funghi e ogni organismo vegetale o animale che si deposita sui tessuti o li erode. Diventano pertanto matrici di raccolta e strumenti alternativi di metodologie scientifiche di campionamento e analisi di laboratorio per determinare la qualità̀ dei luoghi in cui sono state immerse.

Ăcque Naturografie. Roberto Ghezzi solo exhibition è un’iniziativa realizzate anche con il prezioso supporto di Interlaced srl (Udine, Milano, Treviso), Ricci spa (Roma, Milano) e Peroni spa (Gallarate, VA)

INFO: la mostra “Ăcque Naturografie. Roberto Ghezzi solo exhibition”

è visitabile al Fondaco dei Tedeschi – Calle del Fontego dei Tedeschi, Ponte di Rialto, Venezia – ogni giorno negli orari di apertura del Fondaco.

Tutte le informazioni su www.startcultura.it

A new artistic objective is added to the project that we all know as Naturographies© which Ghezzi has been leading and producing all over the world for twenty years. This new exhibition is the landing point of a project developed over the last three years along the coasts of the northern Adriatic to arrive, in 2021, in the Venice lagoon.

The works on display were created in the Venetian lagoon, in very different places from an environmental point of view and therefore extremely significant: natural and man-made environments. The locations chosen by the artist for his installations were the stretch of water inside the Arsenale, in some salt marshes of the Southern Lagoon of Venice, in the WWF Reserve of Val Averto and at the Falconera island.

As already known, Roberto Ghezzi’s works are the result of a process between Man and Nature where the artist acts by choosing the place of installation and the rigorously natural material of the support, then entrusting the canvases to the waters and lands and above all time and the randomness of the intervention of Nature itself the task of completing the work.
The light, the minerals and the organisms that live in those waters or lands act on the canvases to create contemporary landscapes that are alive and always different and which become a visual testimony of the place of creation.

Naturographies© are therefore born from the hand of natural elements and from the mind of man and are works that no longer represent the landscape, but they are. As the artist declares «Based on the landscape I encounter, I choose different types of fabrics, supports, I modify the formulas of the reagents (the natural preparations with which I treat the canvases to trigger the process) and the timing, then it is Nature that becomes self-artist.”

Roberto Ghezzi’s Naturographies©, in addition to possessing a strong artistic connotation, are increasingly acquiring a scientific value, an effective means of reconnaissance on the state of the environments (natural or man-made) in which they are installed. Thanks to the collaboration started in 2021 with the CNR-IOM of Trieste and the CNR-ISMAR of Venice, some tissue samples of this project have been the subject of scientific studies thanks to the investigations conducted with the scanning electron microscope (SEM-FIB), the results of which can be read together with the critical text both on display and in the catalog which will be downloadable from the START website (startcultura.it).

This artistic project can be interpreted from multiple perspectives: artistic, philosophical and scientific. The spectator is faced with an unusual production, bearer of mixed aesthetic canons (natural-human), symbolic values (the artist who delegates the gestural act to nature), ethical aspects (understanding and dialogue with the landscape and its protection).

The artistic project “ăquae” is promoted by START culture and curated together with the EContemporary gallery in collaboration with Fondaco dei Tedeschi by DFS (LVMH group), sponsored by the Veneto Region and the Municipality of Venice and realized with the contribution of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, of the Port System of the Northern Adriatic Sea (Venice) and the participation of the Interregional Authority for Public Works for the Veneto, Trentino Alto Adige and Friuli Venezia Giulia. Former Water Magistrate – Venice.
We thank the companies Interlaced srl (Udine, Milan, Treviso), Ricci spa (Rome, Milan), Peroni spa (Gallarate, VA) for their support and support.

The exhibition can be visited every day until 1 May 2023 at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (Calle del Fontego dei Tedeschi, Rialto Bridge, Venice – opening hours every day 10-19.30)

ph. Simone Rossi courtesy Start Cultura

Ecosystems between ecology and art: Roberto Ghezzi, Antonio Massarutto

Davide Silvioli

Thanks to the example provided by the artistic work by Roberto Ghezzi and by Antonio Massarutto it is possible to outline a synthetic but paradigmatic overview concerning how contemporary artistic research is questioning environmental issues. The need to rethink the relationship between human survival models and natural cycles, as is well known, represents one of the most pressing issues of the current era. The artistic present, not unaffected by the growing of this matter, is facing it by following plural declinations and generating equally heterogeneous outcomes. Focusing by artists on the entities of nature, beside leading artistic experimentation outside of the traditional locations, often entails collaborations with professionals belonging to other academic and scientific fields. Also it allows the complexity of this phenomenon to be brought into sharper focus, through the lens of aesthetics. By this perspective, artists’ point of view could favour the awareness of a new conception of the natural category within today’s society, opposite to the one dominating nowadays. Furthermore, looking at the international artistic scene, it should be noted how, over the last two decades, theoretical researches and artistic practices have developed, aimed at experimenting a possible dialogue between artistic investigation and nature, deepened in all its articulation and approached by different ways.

So, both the research by Ghezzi and that by Massarutto fit, with relevance, into the borders of a disciplinary field that, currently, appears being an urgency of our time. Both artists practice a vision that consider natural environment as the place of birth of the artwork, qualifying it as an integral part of the aesthetics by each. This states that, although in different ways, the two artists manifest a shared consideration of nature as the source of their respective work. So, it is clear to understand how the Shar Planina National Park, the creative source of the works created by Ghezzi and Massarutto for the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) – Skopje, of course identified a unique and really constructive scenario for both of them, in order to test their artistic practices.

Starting from the observation of this shared root, experimentation by Ghezzi and that by Massarutto follow developments with degrees of difference, which can be seen in both methods and outcomes. Although the creative process of both of them starts by knowing the area in which they are going to work and by collecting information about it, it can be seen how this moment develops in different ways. Indeed, if Ghezzi’s approach appears mainly analytical, in which the surroundings are studied through drawings with a conceptual aspect and through sampling aimed at detecting their properties, Massarutto, on the other hand, mainly follows the empirical trends of his own feeling, letting himself be guided by the intuition freely stimulated by the features of the materials intercepted discovering the landscape. By realising this divergence, which should not be interpreted in terms of contradiction but rather in terms of complementarity, makes it very clear how the two artists face the same object of investigation from perspectives that are different but equally effective in reformulating, with the same relevance, its actual complexity.

In critically linking the works by the two authors matured in this specific circumstance, it has to observes, among congruities and disparities, how while in Ghezzi’s works nature manifests itself as a living ecosystem that actively contributes to the genesis of the work as well as its author, in Massarutto’s works the same natural dimension is declined as a source of matter and formal cues.

The installations by Ghezzi, belonging to the Naturographies series, represent the conclusion, partly free by author’s control, of the effect of the action of natural cycles on the canvas, which he placed within the Park, in the sites chosen during the double residency period. In this way, his surfaces become an unmediated form of expression of the surrounding landscape itself, thanks to the forces of nature and its entities that, in the exercise of their incessant becoming, build a symbiosis with the canvas to the point of innervating their fibre, giving rise to visual compositions featured by a vibrant and pervasive pigmentation, where the warm shades of the earth and vegetation are defined in textures with an organic appearance that maintain, while altering it, the quality of the materials of origin. So, it is logical to realize how time has a constitutive role here, being the tool by which the impermanence of nature determines the final entity of this body of work. The artworks by Massarutto, revealing a different methodology but matured in the same way by his relationship with the habitat constituted by the park, are characterised by a formal identity suspended between natural element, zoomorphic element, anthropomorphic appearance and architectural artifice. His creative process starts from the practice of drawing, used to prefigure the conformation of the future physiognomies of his assemblages, structured using natural components found in the park territory. Wasted parts of wood of different shape and kind become the technical devices through which the artist gives body to his works. Their shapes, which fit harmoniously into the natural scenery, seem finally to be suspended among the authenticity of the living material used, the category of the verisimilar that connotes the final appearance achieved and the sense of the simulated that is implicit in interventions of this kind.

According to these stylistic and operational features, Roberto Ghezzi and Antonio Massarutto can be included rightly within the ranks of those artists committed to elaborating a language in which the recovery of matter, sensitivity to the organic universe, time, metamorphosis and the partial delegation of the work’s definition to third agents seem to be the most frequent terms of an alphabet that expresses an aesthetic opposite to that professed by so much of contemporaneity, vainly addicted to the prevailing culture of media inflation, of over-exposition, of hyper-visible.

Thanks to the example provided by the artistic work by Roberto Ghezzi and by Antonio Massarutto it is possible to outline a synthetic but paradigmatic overview concerning how contemporary artistic research is questioning environmental issues. The need to rethink the relationship between human survival models and natural cycles, as is well known, represents one of the most pressing issues of the current era. The artistic present, not unaffected by the growing of this matter, is facing it by following plural declinations and generating equally heterogeneous outcomes. Focusing by artists on the entities of nature, beside leading artistic experimentation outside of the traditional locations, often entails collaborations with professionals belonging to other academic and scientific fields. Also it allows the complexity of this phenomenon to be brought into sharper focus, through the lens of aesthetics. By this perspective, artists’ point of view could favour the awareness of a new conception of the natural category within today’s society, opposite to the one dominating nowadays. Furthermore, looking at the international artistic scene, it should be noted how, over the last two decades, theoretical researches and artistic practices have developed, aimed at experimenting a possible dialogue between artistic investigation and nature, deepened in all its articulation and approached by different ways.

So, both the research by Ghezzi and that by Massarutto fit, with relevance, into the borders of a disciplinary field that, currently, appears being an urgency of our time. Both artists practice a vision that consider natural environment as the place of birth of the artwork, qualifying it as an integral part of the aesthetics by each. This states that, although in different ways, the two artists manifest a shared consideration of nature as the source of their respective work. So, it is clear to understand how the Shar Planina National Park, the creative source of the works created by Ghezzi and Massarutto for the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) – Skopje, of course identified a unique and really constructive scenario for both of them, in order to test their artistic practices.

Starting from the observation of this shared root, experimentation by Ghezzi and that by Massarutto follow developments with degrees of difference, which can be seen in both methods and outcomes. Although the creative process of both of them starts by knowing the area in which they are going to work and by collecting information about it, it can be seen how this moment develops in different ways. Indeed, if Ghezzi’s approach appears mainly analytical, in which the surroundings are studied through drawings with a conceptual aspect and through sampling aimed at detecting their properties, Massarutto, on the other hand, mainly follows the empirical trends of his own feeling, letting himself be guided by the intuition freely stimulated by the features of the materials intercepted discovering the landscape. By realising this divergence, which should not be interpreted in terms of contradiction but rather in terms of complementarity, makes it very clear how the two artists face the same object of investigation from perspectives that are different but equally effective in reformulating, with the same relevance, its actual complexity.

In critically linking the works by the two authors matured in this specific circumstance, it has to observes, among congruities and disparities, how while in Ghezzi’s works nature manifests itself as a living ecosystem that actively contributes to the genesis of the work as well as its author, in Massarutto’s works the same natural dimension is declined as a source of matter and formal cues.

The installations by Ghezzi, belonging to the Naturographies series, represent the conclusion, partly free by author’s control, of the effect of the action of natural cycles on the canvas, which he placed within the Park, in the sites chosen during the double residency period. In this way, his surfaces become an unmediated form of expression of the surrounding landscape itself, thanks to the forces of nature and its entities that, in the exercise of their incessant becoming, build a symbiosis with the canvas to the point of innervating their fibre, giving rise to visual compositions featured by a vibrant and pervasive pigmentation, where the warm shades of the earth and vegetation are defined in textures with an organic appearance that maintain, while altering it, the quality of the materials of origin. So, it is logical to realize how time has a constitutive role here, being the tool by which the impermanence of nature determines the final entity of this body of work. The artworks by Massarutto, revealing a different methodology but matured in the same way by his relationship with the habitat constituted by the park, are characterised by a formal identity suspended between natural element, zoomorphic element, anthropomorphic appearance and architectural artifice. His creative process starts from the practice of drawing, used to prefigure the conformation of the future physiognomies of his assemblages, structured using natural components found in the park territory. Wasted parts of wood of different shape and kind become the technical devices through which the artist gives body to his works. Their shapes, which fit harmoniously into the natural scenery, seem finally to be suspended among the authenticity of the living material used, the category of the verisimilar that connotes the final appearance achieved and the sense of the simulated that is implicit in interventions of this kind.

According to these stylistic and operational features, Roberto Ghezzi and Antonio Massarutto can be included rightly within the ranks of those artists committed to elaborating a language in which the recovery of matter, sensitivity to the organic universe, time, metamorphosis and the partial delegation of the work’s definition to third agents seem to be the most frequent terms of an alphabet that expresses an aesthetic opposite to that professed by so much of contemporaneity, vainly addicted to the prevailing culture of media inflation, of over-exposition, of hyper-visible.

Saturday 24th September the FABER art gallery presents the IMPERMANENTE exhibition by Roberto Ghezzi.
The conceptual center of the exhibition is represented by the Naturografie © project, which had its prodromes in the early 2000s and which defines new criteria for collaboration between Man and Nature, in which time and natural elements once again become protagonists of creation together with the artist. An experimentation on the possibility of outlining an artistic operation in close contact with nature, such as to restore an image of the impermanence of its action, of its incessant becoming.
The exhibition itinerary, entirely conceived in site specific, aims to immerse the viewer in an organic corpus of works that reflects a living and pulsating ecosystem environment.
In fact, the outcome of Ghezzi’s research is equivalent to a restitution, on canvas, of the flow of the invisible elements that acted on it, thus reconstructing a subliminal, aesthetic and at the same time iconic portrait. The surfaces appear as textures characterized by the fading of vibrant and pervasive colors, obtained from the stratification of sediments and minerals, as well as the passage of time; here constitutive factor.
The experience of nature, through the terrestrial or aquatic installations made in various corners of the globe, is perceived in aesthetic terms, but also in material terms, making it the common denominator of an investigation that aims to connect the breath of the absolute and the relative . The artist searches for the most hidden archetype; the essence, the noumenon.
The shift, by the artist, of the direction of investigation, both thematic and operational, in favor of research on natural entities contrasts with the dominant conception in today’s society, which is drastically technocratic. The example provided by the work of Roberto Ghezzi reflects how artistic contemporaneity is developing a language where time, metamorphosis, the use of perishable organic materials and the partial delegation of the definition of the work to the automatisms of ecosystems appear to be the majority terms of an alphabet that expresses an aesthetic opposite to that professed by the prevailing culture of media inflation, of the overexposed, of the didactic, of the hyper-visible.
“In my research, the aspect of transformation assumes more and more importance.
The Naturographies are intentionally created not to resist, to yield to the place, to the passage of time on them. Impermanence is a value for me, both artistically, because I admire its incredible and absolutely free forms; both ethically, because a non-eternal work carries with it a strong message in a society that has made the imperishable residue its condemnation; and philosophically, because in the artistic exaltation of the forms of decomposition I also see an exorcization of the disappearance, of the disappearance of the body, of an elsewhere rejected according to the typical Western attitude that no longer accepts the idea of ​​passing away.
And then the parts that are often missing from the works taken, the disappearances that tear them through cuts, holes and tears, take on a new, much higher meaning: that of the cycle of life. From nature to work of art to nature. And if there is more value or meaning in a new life than in an immutable and eternal human work, then what disappears acquires more value than what remains. Here is the new primacy of impermanence. ”

curated by Cristian Porretta and Davide Silvioli

from 24 September to 3 December 2022

Tuesday – Saturday 10:00 – 19:00
Sunday by appointment
FABER art gallery

The LANDSHAPE exhibition set up in the noble rooms of CasermArcheologica, hosts the works of Roberto Ghezzi and Tina Hellen from 8 September to 19 November.
The meeting between the two artists is included in the program of the INTERNATIONAL CAMPUS WITH 25 YOUNG PEOPLE FROM NORWAY, SWEDEN, DENMARK AND ENGLAND for the European project on sustainability and creativity C6 creativity, culture and collaboration to combat climate change and is also the outcome of two workshops / performances held by the two artists during the days on the Campus.
Roberto Ghezzi, an artist residing in Cortona who has been working for years in the field of artistic research dedicated to the landscape, will present a series of “Naturographies” created between the Tiber and the naturalistic landscape of Denmark.
The Naturogarafie are a balanced project between science and contemporary art. A collaboration between Man and Nature in a different perspective than other forms of art that transforms art in the landscape (Land Art) into landscape art. Nature intervenes by creating and living on a virgin support installed for this purpose by man / artist. The collateral objective is also to provide greater knowledge of the territory from a landscape point of view and its biodiversity and above all to establish an effective dialogue and a different use of the natural places that host and feed the artist’s creations.
Tina Hellen, Danish artist, resident in Copenhagen, will exhibit the video documentation of the performance entitled Frisk Flugt, which will report what happened in the previous days together with the group of boys and girls of the Campus: a reflection on urban development through a performance that took place in part also in public city spaces, between the industrial area of ​​Sansepolcro up to the slopes of the mountain passing through the historic center.

The Trebizond Visual Arts Association, with the patronage of the municipality of Perugia, is organizing a review of five exhibitions for the current year under the general title of Drawing as concept. The analyzed theme refers to the methods of intuition, elaboration and initial drafting of the idea, outlining the paths through which the intuition manifests itself. The exhibitions will be accompanied from time to time by a general text on the subject, for this issue the catalog will be accompanied by the contributions of Marco Bastianelli and Mara Predicatori.

…. The term “Drawing”, with which the Italian “draw” is usually translated, refers to “to draw”, in particular to drawing a line on a sheet; yet, it can also be a matter of drawing out, from the soul (or mind), as when we say to draw a conclusion (in English: to draw a conclusion) ….
Marco Bastianelli.

…. From sign in (of) sign, man (the artist) can and tries to give substance to ideas. Just like the word, the act of drawing is an act of thinking. The language of drawing, even before being a means of communication between the subject and others, is an internal mental function that provides the fundamental means for the development of man’s (and artist’s) thought and fulfills the functions of see, think, memorize, communicate…. Mara Predicatori.

In the seasonal program of Palazzo Collicola, the collective exhibition Genetics of form constitutes a moment of attention on how contemporary artistic practices are reformulating the entity of form in the work of art, starting from the analysis of the work of a selection of emerging artists and mid-career.
The project, curated by Davide Silvioli, brings on display a circle of seven artists, different in terms of vocabulary and references, equalized by the use of methodologies that experiment with means, processes, materials and materials, now innovative and now traditional, sometimes hybridizing them, up to to create new aesthetic destinations, where the form, proving insubordinate to the canonical prescriptions of eurythmy and composition, opens up to the unstable effect of operations that alter and undermine any pretense of completeness or completion.
The title of the exhibition, on this basis, is inspired by the anecdote according to which the scientists James Watson and Francis Crick, in the discovery of the double helix morphology of the DNA structure, seem to have been inspired by some scribbles made by Crick in his workbook. . Despite its apparent simplicity, this episode tells a lot about the nature of form in the molecular universe as well as in that of artistic research, enclosing the complexity of the relationship between form and substance, between form and external environment, between natural and artificial form, between form and semblance, between form and its perception.
Therefore, the languages ​​of Antonio Barbieri, Giulio Bensasson, Roberto Ghezzi, Giulia Manfredi, Miriam Montani, Bernardo Tirabosco, Medina Zabo, with a high degree of interdisciplinarity, represent seven researches which, while evaluating their respective subjectivities, argue adequately and unanimously the theoretical premises of the exhibition. Scanned along the rooms on the ground floor of the Museum, their works, passing from sculpture to installation to video, and escaping easy nomenclatures, provide a synthetic but exhaustive scenario of how the classic category of form, in the project interpreted as the result of the simultaneous effect – not always controllable – of endogenous and exogenous impulses, which is still undergoing revision by contemporaneity.