Pisa, Gianni Lucchesi's installation destroys the floor of Santa Maria della Spina

An installation that alters our perception of space: this is Signum by Gianni Lucchesi (Pisa, 1965), a work that can be seen from March 5 to April 10 in the church of Santa Maria della Spina in Pisa, in a project curated by Nicolas Martino, with installation design by Carlo Alberto Arzelà and lighting by Davide Groppi.

Signum wants to be sign, imprint, signal, order, insignia, flag, omen. And also much more: it is the disorientation of our time, it is the anxiety for the future, especially in the new generations, it is the relationship, always complicated between human, nature and spirituality, which pushes the human to find again the ’theology of nature’. Hence the artist’s intent to represent the latent symptom, understood as something that remains hidden and does not appear externally except through the deformation of morphology and, therefore, to work on the floor of the church that represents the foundation of faith, humility, the belief in what is not seen.

How do we change our “perception” of reality, and what are the anthropological consequences of these profound transformations of our being in the world? What happens when the anthropocentric project endangers the very existence of nature and, therefore, of our civilization? In the “disorientation” that characterizes our time, the artist imprints a “sign” that is meant to question the public and at the same time becomes a harbinger of new perspectives.

Gianni Lucchesi’s installation, made in the laboratory, seems to destroy the floor of Santa Maria della Spina, but in fact it simply rests on the floor of the church without any kind of interference. Light, a functional element in the dramaturgy of the installation, involves the floor and the sculpture of the Madonna della Rosa by Andrea and Nino Pisano.

Gianni Lucchesi,(

Gianni Lucchesi,(

Gianni

“I know Gianni Lucchesi and I know his ability to amaze, and when I walked in I gasped, this installation is crazy,” says City of Pisa Culture Councilor Pierpaolo Magnani. “This is the 15th exhibition, the last of my term, that we set up in this a sacred place, a treasure chest of art like the church of Santa Maria della Spina: in 3 years and 8 months we have covered 385 days of opening despite two years of pandemic. A great achievement that is crowned with this disruptive operation by an artist like Lucchesi.”

“For the small architectural jewel of the church of Santa Maria della Spina in Pisa,” says Gianni Lucchesi, “I thought of giving up considering the volume of the church as an exhibition container. Within the evocative walls of a sacred architecture, where the spirit is stirred regardless of one’s beliefs, something happens, the manifestation of a strong signal, a symptom.”

“Is there (still) the beach under the pavement? In this phrase that turns one of the most famous slogans of the Parisian May into a question, seems to be contained the key to the ’sign’ imprinted by Gianni Lucchesi,” explains critic Nicolas Martino. “If, in fact, those May days heralded a new world full of promise, in reality they also, and perhaps above all, marked the sunset of modern civilization and thus the end of a ’perception’ of the world that had placed man and his project on nature at the center.”

Gianni Lucchesi was born in Pisa in 1965. Since 1985 he has exhibited in solo and group shows both in Italy and abroad. In 2006 he received the Cisdac award, the Italo-Swiss Center for Contemporary Art. He participated in the 2014 Casablanca Biennial and from 2016 to 2019 in four editions of the Museum of Madness curated by Vittorio Sgarbi. Since 2019 he has been exhibiting in exhibitions curated and presented by Nicolas Ballario. In 2021 he won the competition to create the monument to Sandro Pertini in Savona.

What has distinguished Lucchesi’s work in recent years has been the investigation of the human interior, declined through various forms of representation, always playing between an “outside” and an “inside.” His intention has never been directed toward the individual understood as a single person, but rather a deeper look aimed at universal psychological mechanisms belonging to the human condition. The very titles of the works such as “waiting,” “hierophobia” and “inner conflict” express universal existential concepts, attitudes and feelings referring to certain conditions of the human.

With the project OUT THERE presented in 2021 in Milan by the IPERCUBO gallery, Lucchesi conceptually reversed the direction of his intervention’s gaze from an anthropocentric to an outwardly projected view. In Signum, the intent is to stimulate critical reflection on the part of the observer regarding his or her perception of the environment through a kind of “psychological experiment.”

The exhibition is sponsored by the City of Pisa, Archivio Dolfo and Ipercubo gallery, is produced by Hangar srls and sponsored by Bundles (main sponsor) and Cioni multicenter for construction (sponsor), technical sponsors Spazio Esperienze, Poliart and BMB Italy. Open from March 5 to March 31 on Thursdays and Fridays from 3 to 7 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the morning and 3 to 7 p.m. in the afternoon. April 1 to 10 every day except Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the morning and 3 to 7 p.m. in the afternoon.

Pisa, Gianni Lucchesi's installation destroys the floor of Santa Maria della Spina

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