Paper Mountains. In Carrara, Gabriele Landi's homage to the Apuan Alps.

From June 16 to Sept. 29, 2024, Carrara ’s mudaC is hosting the exhibition Alle montagne (To the Mountains ) by Gabriele Landi (Schaerbeek, 1971), which offers the public a new in situ installation by the Ligurian artist, curated by Cinzia Compalati, manager of the culture sector of the Municipality of Carrara, and with a critical text by Federico Giannini, director of Finestre sull’Arte. Alle montagne intends to pay homage to the city of Carrara by drawing inspiration from the Alpine soldiers’ song Il testamento del capitano (“the fifth piece to the mountains / let them cover him with roses and flowers”). This work by Landi explores new volumes that occupy the space of the Carrara museum’s Project Room, evoking the grandeur of the mountains through a landscape somewhere between the figurative and the abstract.

The installation is presented as a cartographic map that evokes a sense of three-dimensionality while remaining anchored to the surface of the Fabriano paper from which it is made, and is characterized by a vibrant pink color similar to the glow of marble in the sun. The work, creates new spaces through the artist’s carvings, paying homage to the traditions and craftsmanship of Carrara.

Complementing the work, there is an installation of opposite sign, both chromatically and conceptually. Positioned specularly, this one represents the reflection of the mountains: the valley, which carries anthropic signs and human presences that are reflected as on water. This contrast between the two installations emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between the mountains and the valley, between imposing nature and human intervention. The mudaC Project Room, with this installation, reiterates how Carrara, recognized as a UNESCO Creative City, is a center for the production and dissemination of sculpture, not limited only to the use of marble. Landi’s work exemplifies the innovation and tradition that coexist here, aiming to offer a new perspective on the representation of landscape and local culture through contemporary art.

“The lyrical delicacy of Gabriele Landi’s art,” writes Federico Giannini in his text, "hides behind the forms of a geometric abstraction that is continually capable of rethinking itself, of reinventing itself, almost to the point of denying itself in order to mutate into something else, with outcomes that are always new, unexpected, surprising. A geometric abstraction that, with Alle montagne (To the Mountains), reaches an unprecedented monumentality, a new expression of that research of his situated, from the beginning, in a border zone between painting and sculpture without ever being either one or the other. Landi’s homage to the mountains of Carrara is expressed through a weave of signs that gives continuity to a line of investigation recently inaugurated by the Ligurian artist: transforming the surface into space through sign. In his new work, a fabric of openings on large sheets of Fabriano paper evokes the orography of the Apuan Alps with a pattern made up of proliferations, thinnings and progressions that composes a tale without a precise narrative, understood in a literal sense, but present in the way the call to the mountains comes to life."

Notes on the artist

Gabriele Landi (Brussels, Oct. 23, 1971), a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan in 1996, lives and works in the province of La Spezia. In 1998 he participated in Di... segno Italiano, curated by Mirella Bandini at Palazzina CEPU, Turin and in Artissima edition (TO) with the cultural association L’Uovo di Struzzo. Between1999 and 2005 he collaborated with Valeria Tognoni and together they held several solo exhibitions including Luoghi at Galleria Coevit Arte in Viadana (MN) in 2002 and Bitopie curated by Aldo Iori at the cultural association Esquilino Domani, Rome in 2005. In 2000, at the invitation of Enzo Cannaviello, Landi and Tognoni’s work Eclisse became part of the permanent collection of the Paolo Pini Art Museum Milan. In 2016 he participates in the Suzzara Prize (MN), in 2018 he organizes and participates in NoPlace 4 at the former Ceramica Vaccari, Ponzano Magra (SP) and exhibits Tre punti e una Virgola curated by Maria Mancini in Sarzana, in 2019 he realizes Coloring Colors curated by Maria Mancini at the Associazione Culturale Yurta, Rapolano Terme (SI). In 2020 he holds the two solo exhibitions Errare errando curated by Federico Fusi at Inner Room, Siena and Cerchiami Chimera fino in fondo curated by Franco Troiani at La Madonna del Pozzo in Spoleto (PG), one of his works is included in the exhibition of the finalists of the 2020 ArtemCup Prize at Fondazione Dino Zoli in Forlì. In 2021 he mounted the solo exhibition Lieve Svanire curated by Nicola Ricci at Vôtre Spazi Contemporanei, in the Palazzo del Medico piazza Alberica in Carrara (MS), in the same space he participated in the group exhibition Uguali Disuguali. Between December 2021 and February 2022 he was invited by Matteo Galbiati to participate in the group show Dialoghi Siciliani in Taormina. In 2023 as part of the exhibition Debacle curated by Gino D’Ugo at the FourteenArtellaro space he exhibits with Maurizio Donzelli, Elena El Asmar and Gianluca Sgherri. The four artists intervene together in the small space, creating a contemporary Wunderkammer. In September 2023, he is invited by Orianna Fregosi to exhibit his work as part of Parallelamente, a review of the Sarzana Festival of the Mind, with a solo exhibition at Palazzo Picedi Benettini in Sarzana (SP).

Paper Mountains. In Carrara, Gabriele Landi's homage to the Apuan Alps.

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