Cavriago Land Art: temporary contemporary installations in the town center

From Oct. 2 to 31, 2021, the Cavriago Land Art exhibition, curated by Gaia Bertani and Nicla Ferrari, with the collaboration of Ivan Cantoni, will be held in Cavriago (Reggio Emilia), promoted by the cultural association Gommapane Lab, under the patronage of the Province of Reggio Emilia, the Municipality of Cavriago and Multiplo Cavriago.

Thanks to temporary installations created by artists Oscar Accorsi, Federico Bianchi, Brunivo Buttarelli, Fiorenza Fiorini, Mirco Incerti, Antonella De Nisco, Federica Merli, Carlo Moretti, Mirko Frignani and Nicla Ferrari, the public will be accompanied along a route that winds throughout the town center with points of interest in Lenin Square, Multiplo Park, the parvis of San Terenziano, Rio Park, and Benderi Square, discovering the different languages of contemporary art.

“Taking care of places,” explain Gaia Bertani and Nicla Ferrari, “means taking care of people; welcoming the works in the places of our living is a bit like welcoming a guest, taking care that they are comfortable, going towards understanding their language and learning something new. In essence, welcoming works into the places of our living, whether natural or man-made, shows them to us in a different light, perhaps reveals new potentials and teaches us to love them more.”

Theme of the 2021 edition is Air, Water, Earth, Fire, referring to the material character of sculptures, paintings and installations that are bound to bear the marks of time.

“Deeply connected to the earth, to the mineral domain,” writes art critic Ivan Cantoni, “Brunivo Buttarelli’s artificial fossils turn out to be. Carved in negative in the tenacious texture of metal, Fiorenza Fiorini’s human figure appears, by contrast, singularly akin to the inconsistency of air. Antonella De Nisco’s weaves, suspended among the trees, also evoke an aerial lightness, akin to the world of sounds to which their title refers: ’AscoltoGuardoParlo.’ Yet they are composed of thin branches that originally belonged to bushes and trees sprung from the earth. Although made of metal, a typically chthonic material, Oscar Accorsi’s installation, due to the prevalence of voids and the thin, reflective nature of the profiles with which it is constructed, is perceived as something light and airy, almost weightless. With the grass and trees of the Rio Park Mirco Incerti’s sequence of terracottas dialogues intensely: springing from the union of earth and fire, they manage to evoke the fibrousness of wood and thus evoke the vegetal domain, whose roots penetrate deep into the very earth with which the sculptures are shaped. To the dynamic levity of air brings us back Nicla Ferrari’s ’Respi-Rosa House’ where crocheted woven walls, composed of recycled doilies, form the faint boundary between the interior and exterior of a tiny fairy-tale dwelling. Connected to the earth through the use of wood are the works of Carlo Moretti and Federico Bianchi. Moretti, in a single stele, evokes in a symbolic key through the practice of carving combined with the use of color also air water and fire. Bianchi, employing remnants of logs and stones from the bed of the Po, succeeds in making us perceive the shaping force exerted by the current on whatever is swept into its flow. To the sky and its gifts are dedicated the installations in Benderi Square, where Mirko Frignani’s work directs our gaze upward, in a conceptual space designed to mediate, through a process of estrangement, our perception of the high, of what towers above us in both a physical and figurative (or perhaps, even, spiritual) sense. We are in the domain of air. A shower of drops expertly worked by Federica Merli’s crochet brings down, toward us, condensing it into thousands of knots, the lightness of the clouds, which we are led to imagine as skeins of cotton waiting to be worked.”

Oscar Accorsi’s work, damaged shortly after its installation, will be replaced by a panel related to the project. The artist’s research can still be viewed at www.oscaraccorsi.com.

To attend the opening, scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 2 at 3 p.m. at the Cesare Arduini Civic Hall, reservations will be required at gommapanelab@gmail.com. After the presentation of the project, visitors will be invited on an individual walk to discover the installations, which throughout the afternoon will be animated by La Compagnia di Allorquando and Marina Ligabue. Walking along the exhibition route, from Lenin Square to Benderi Square, visitors will also be able to meet the artists. On Saturday, Oct. 2, in addition to the Cavriago Land Art installations, Progetto Follia, a different mural by Katja Benassi in the outdoor area of Allodi Apicoltura and Jellyfish by Enrica Borghi in the indoor spaces of Multiplo Cavriago, as well as Michele Liparesi’s permanent installation in Piazza Lenin will also be accessible.

Image: Nicla Ferrari, A Respi-Rosa House, Rio Park.

Cavriago Land Art: temporary contemporary installations in the town center

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