Arts
TERRA/MATERIAPRIMA
A soft carpet of real grass welcomes the visitors of the show. They are encouraged to walk barefoot while they enjoy the artworks on display.
«Many are the expressive representations exploring – by an artistic, sociological, ethical, aesthetic and cultural point of view – the peculiar link between land and art.
«That’s starting from the “guru” Joseph Beuys, tree planter and roommate to a coyote, to Michael Heizer, author of Displaced, Replaced Mass; from Robert Smithson, pioneer of Land Art and author of Spiral Getty to Richard Long’s Crossing Place; from Dennis Hoppenheim to Paolo Barrile, behavioural environmentalist-artist of Messaggio Terra, through Gilles Clement and the Manifesto Of The Third Landscape, just to quote some examples of the last fifty years.» (Giosuè Allegrini, art critic and writer, from the introduction to the catalogue of the show).
That’s what is all about the exhibit on display at the Galleria d’Arti Visive of the Università del Melo in Gallarate, a community near Varese, in Lombardy.
The genre extends to include the work of Christo as well as, incidentally, the recent work by photographer Sebastiao Salgado: Genesis.
As far as for the subtitle, “Mail Art project”, it concerns the procedure by which 400 works of art have been collected from 240 artists during a period of six months in order to put together this exhibit. It refers as well to a long tradition dating back to Futurism, Dadaism, to the Fluxus research, and to the Nouveau Realism, concerning the relation between the object mailed, the sender and the receiver.
“Terra” is translated either with “soil” or with “Earth”, depending on the meaning one would like to express. In this case, both meanings apply, due to the raw material (“Materiaprima ”, that’s it) of the art works and due to the environmental message inherent to the operation.
Terra/Materiaprima – Mail Art project curated by Ruggero Maggi
Galleria di Arti Visive dell’Università del Melo – Via Magenta, 3 – Gallarate (VA)
From December 2nd to January 27th, 2017
(Testo italiano qui)
