At the Cavallerizza Reale in Turin, the exhibition of contemporary illustrator Elisa Seitzinger

The Cavallerizza Reale in Turin is hosting from Sept. 21 to Oct. 22, 2023, the exhibition Sacro Fuoco by contemporary illustrator Elisa Seitzinger, curated by Paolo Lampugnani, created as part of the Interreg Italy Switzerland Di-Se: Drawing the Territory project, led by Associazione Musei d’Ossola, in collaboration with Paratissima, PRS Srl Impresa Sociale, Cavallerizza Torino. Under the patronage of the City of Turin, with the support of Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and with contributions from Fondazione CRT and Gruppo Cassa Depositi e Prestiti.

The Cavallerizza is transformed into the temple of fire: the sacred fire that drives the artist to create free of constraints except those imposed by his own feeling.

“The imposing figures on the walls, in some way an evolution of the major arcana of the tarot, where color and form take center stage, document the artist’s new feeling about the treatment of images. The intention to create real site-specific installations, which become the heart of the exhibition itself, while flanked by the plates created as an illustrator, clearly demonstrates the new path taken by the artist who, far from recusing her own history and vocation, expands its meaning by giving it new vigor and consciousness, with the idea of obeying a purely creative and artistic intent, that is, not bound by external demands,” the curator explains.

"I perceived the Cavallerizza Reale as a dreamlike space, which evoked in my mind the temple described by Borges in The Circular Ruins. A sacred, decayed place where the protagonist goes to dream,“ said the artist. ”His purpose is to shape the dream so that it lives a life of its own realizing that ’the task of shaping the inconsistent and dizzying matter of which dreams are composed is the most arduous that a man can undertake.’ Until, after a long time, ’in the dream of the man who dreamed, he who was dreamed awoke’. The protagonist seems to have actualized a creature that emerged from his imagination except, at the end of the story, to realize that he too is nothing but a dream. Sacred Fire is then an emergence into the stuff of which we human beings ourselves are made, the imagination."

Along an entire wall of the stables, a second installation is encountered with a series of sketches, preparatory works, excerpts from readings and images, with the intention of synchronously representing what, concealed in the artist’s work space, underlies each work. The site-specific work is complemented by the video made on the occasion of the performance that saw a horse, enhanced in appearance by the stupendous caparison made ad hoc, run for the last time in the real riding arena.

The exhibition then aims to recount, with selected works, the last ten years of Elisa Seitzinger’s activity: specific projects such as the most recent tarot deck made and displayed here in its entirety, collaborations with writers and musicians, art books, images for magazines, newspapers, and advertising campaigns.

Sacred Fire is open to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. (last entry at 6 p.m.). Free admission with registration at Paratissima Club.

Photo by Lorenzo Morandi.

At the Cavallerizza Reale in Turin, the exhibition of contemporary illustrator Elisa Seitzinger

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