Florence, a large obelisk by Felice Limosani at the Casamonti Collection: it is called Pieces of Peace

From September 22 to January 28, 2024, in Florence , the courtyard of Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni, home of the Roberto Casamonti Collection, will host a site-specific installation by Felice Limosani (Foggia, 1966): it is Pieces of Peace, an obelisk pointed toward the sky, suspended above a body of water. The surface of the obelisk, made of a highly technological steel sheet, will reflect everything around it, slowly changing perspective, thanks to its rotating movement.

Limosani, an artist who makes multidisciplinary training his strength, conceived Pieces of Peace commissioned by Roberto Casamonti: curated by Sonia Zampini, director of the Collection, the project aspires to thin every conceptual and physical limit in favor of a visual harmony that integrates and makes all the elements involved dialogue and tune. The artist’s invitation is to reflect on the present moment, on the collective desire for peace, a coveted but constantly unfulfilled condition due to the inability to quell conflicts, the denial of rights, due to religious and ethnic tensions, and environmental disasters. Pieces of Peace, in the author’s intention, is a sign, has nothing political, but calls everyone to contribute a piece to peace through culture, knowledge, education, kindness, mutual respect, values fundamental to its realization and art is a means. Not surprisingly, the artist, has chosen an ancient form for this narrative, a form that traces history, such as when Rome’s army occupied Egypt and took away the obelisk of Heliopolis, dear to the Egyptians, as Sonia Zampini explains in the critical essay accompanying the exhibition. In that case, something was taken away that, in addition to bearing witness to the conquest, represented the cultural identity of that place with all the implications related to the mythological symbolism it represented. Pieces of Peace is thus meant to be an ideal joining of heaven and earth, of the human dimension and the place of ideas, a desire to complete and balance opposites: us and the world, us and others.

"I conceived the work Pieces of Peace,“ Felice Limosani declares, ”as an installation that starting from aesthetic experience makes use of poetic, symbolic and metaphorical references. The obelisk is not only a memorial, whose etymology leads back to the Latin verb monere (to remember), but in this case it is meant to be a peremptory and assertive symbol. It stands in space as a visual annotation that without rooting itself in the earth is suspended over a body of water. Its static as much as ecstatic condition represents the balance between concreteness and dream. The rotation alludes to the continuous and evolutionary process of life, mixing reflections and perspectives, truth and perception. Simultaneously, steel, speaks to us of strength and endurance, universal values that determine the growth and development of every living condition. In the polished and mirrored surface of the work, reality is reflected and with it also the wish for peace, as a condition that persists, always in place, underlying in our consciences and gestures."

“I went to visit Felice Limosani at his studio,” says Roberto Casamonti. “I found in his works a great technique and skill but also a great visionariness imbued with thought and poetry. I consider Limosani a very good artist, a true artist, and it is my intention to represent him in all respects in the art world. I was very fascinated by the project that Felice and Sonia, director of the Collection, worked out together for Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni. The obelisk is a symbol, full of history, perfect for this place, it has an almost hypnotic power. Pieces of Peace is an evocative title, in such a dark historical period, dominated by wars, environmental disasters and social injustices. I would like, with this work, to contribute, in our own small way, to ensure that peace can be fulfilled in all its dimensions for us and for future generations.”

“Limosani is a unicum,” Cristiano Seganfreddo, editor of the contemporary art magazine Flash Art, points out in the catalog text, “his language is indefinable, impossible to pigeonhole him, but his poetics is capable of arousing a sense of awe that goes beyond place and time.”

A volume, Forma Edizioni, on the artist’s work with texts by Sonia Zampini, Felice Limosani, Cristiano Seganfreddo and Jeffrey Schnapp will be published for the occasion. For information you can visit the Casamonti Collection website.

Biographical notes.

An internationally recognized artist, Felice Limosani is an interpreter and innovator of the Digital Humanities, an expert in expressive avant-gardes and emerging languages. He works with the idea of integrating humanities and digital technologies through art and design to create in the form of synaesthetic experiences, new levels of perception, knowledge and expanded culture. Based in Florence, his multidisciplinary studio operates under the legal status of a Benefit Society to develop novel models of cultural heritage enhancement, including supporting social, educational and environmental contexts. His work ranges from art installations, construction of physical and virtual immersive environments to curating commissioned corporate projects.

A researcher committed to connecting aesthetic and sensory languages with advanced interfaces, he lectures at universities and study centers, placing the human factor at the center of social, technological and cultural innovations. He has been a member of the scientific committee of Fondazione Matera Capitale della Cultura Europea 2019 and Fondazione Venezia Museo Multimediale M9. He curated the exhibition “Planet EXPO 2015 know, taste, enjoy” for the Milan Triennale. Harvard University acquired in the digital collections section, his work Dante, The Eternal Poet, for safekeeping and dissemination in perpetuity.

He has created commissioned works exhibited at: Louvre Paris, Miami Art Basel, Italian Cultural Institute New York, Opera di Santa Croce Florence - Pazzi Chapel, The White Chapel Gallery London, Palazzo Strozzi and Palazzo Vecchio Florence, Galleria dell’Accademia Florence, Accademia di Francia Rome, Triennale Milan, Mies Van der Rohe Pavilion Barcelona. An expert in visual culture and multidisciplinary languages, he has given lectures and seminars for Stanford University, Central Saint Martins - IUAV University Venice, University of the Arts London, Ecal Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne, YPO Presidents Organization, Domus Academy Milan, Ca’ Foscari Venice, La Sapienza Rome, Istituto Marangoni Milan, NABA Milan. The essay “Italo Globali” (Lupetti 2014), placed him among the leading Italian innovators appreciated in the world. www.felicelimosani.com

Florence, a large obelisk by Felice Limosani at the Casamonti Collection: it is called Pieces of Peace

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