At the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Roberto Ghezzi's Naturographies, made by four hands with nature

Until May 1, 2023, Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice is hosting the Ä‚quae Naturografie exhibition. Roberto Ghezzi solo exhibition, curated by START Cultura and Econtemporary. Naturografie are works that artist Roberto Ghezzi creates four-handedly with nature: art, man and environment come into consonant and original connection. The exhibition is the final landing place of a reconnaissance that the artist has been undertaking for a few years along the coastal arc of the upper Adriatic Sea: after the coast of Friuli Venezia Giulia, the coasts of Slovenia and Croatia, the project has landed in the Lagoon of Venice with the realization of the works featured in the exhibition.

They can be defined as true self-portraits of the Lagoon, in which artist and nature draw together material backgrounds, abstract and contemporary views, the works that Ghezzi has created in this artistic-scientific project that counts about a hundred works in total. To understand the creative philosophy of Naturographies, it is necessary to start from a statement by Ghezzi himself, which overturns canons and points of view: “The works do not represent the landscape, they are the landscape.” The works are born with the artist’s choice of the place of installation and the type of fabric to be used, which is left partially submerged in water, thus leaving the completion of the work to time and nature itself. Light, wind and rain, the plants and organisms that live in those waters act on the canvases to create living and ever-changing landscapes: in this way, works are generated that do not simply represent the landscape, but are the landscape.

For the creation of the works on display in Venice, Ghezzi applied his particular technique off the waters of the Venetian lagoon, between the natural oasis of Valle Averto to the more urbanized areas of the Venice Arsenal and the “renaturalized” salt marshes.

“The exhibition groups together a series of large canvases that were generated after more than six months of immersion in the places in the Venetian lagoon identified for the project,” the artist explained. "They were mounted in the spaces of the Fondaco as if they were shrouds, ’skins’ of the lagoon, hoisted with chains that, in turn, had been immersed in the waters for a long time. The lagoon strongly acted on the fabrics of these canvases: it battered them, dug them out, ate them. The dialogue with the waters and nature has profoundly broken them, a dialogue that is sometimes also very strong and suffered. On them we find both the signs of the beauty of creation, such as the greens of the algae that have found lodging and new home in my fabrics, and the signs of pollution and the anthropic effect of the tides. They are shrouds that bear the traces, the wounds, that tell of the beautiful and ugly moments that pass through such an incredible environment as the lagoon. We decided to display them by raising them with chains and hooks in a very rough way, without any kind of sweetening that would soften their forms or presentation,“ Ghezzi further explains. ”In contrast to these, a constellation of smaller works finds space on the walls, tiny cutouts always from the same places but this time framed with clear passpartouts that can make them stand out against the dark brass sky in which they are lying, almost contrasting with the drama of the canvases. They thus become glimpses outward, toward a future. So many slices of lagoon, so many windows, so many stars that make us relax our gaze and imagine a better future, both in terms of the lagoon, but, more generally, in terms of the relationship between man and nature."

The Naturographies are also unconscious collecting matrices that photograph the ecosystem in which they are immersed, a valuable tool for mapping and monitoring the territory and its biodiversity: an aspect that well tells of the CNR-National Research Council ’s adherence to the project (with CNR ISMAR Venice and CNR IOM Trieste). The artistic action combined with the scientific focus invite reflection on current issues such as environmental sustainability, the climate crisis, the central role of science in the preservation and conservation of the environment, and ethics in production and consumption.

All information at www.startcultura.it

Hours: The exhibition can be visited daily during Fondaco’s opening hours.

Photo by Matteo De Fina

At the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Roberto Ghezzi's Naturographies, made by four hands with nature

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