Emanuele Giannetti's Chariot of Fire is on display in Siena.

From December 22, 2018 to January 21, 2019, the inner room space in Siena is hosting Il carro di fuoco, a work by Emanuele Giannetti (Lucignano d’Asso, 1958). It is a work that stems from the author’s encounter with a passage from the Book of Kings (“As they walked conversing, behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire came between the two of them. Eliyahu ascended in the whirlwind toward heaven.”), which occurred as part of the design of an environment for the Carpi Cathedral. The impact produced in the artist a deep reflection on both the inner and outer environment from which one speaks. Giannetti proposes a rather rare iconographic theme: in fact, few are the representations of the Chariot of Fire placed in relation to the figure of Eliyahu (Elijah), the prophet, the one who “proffers,” that is, who speaks. The prophet, in his historical life, invested his contemporaries with words of fire, confronted and defeated social manipulators by virtue of a particular spirit that animated him. A spirit that we might describe as an inner environment so strong that his heir Elisha asked for a double portion of it as an inheritance convinced perhaps that with the same portion he would not match it. Here it is that at his moment Eliahu does not pass away physically but passes from one dimension to another of the same environment, that is, from the inner one of the fire that animates him to the outer one that takes him away physically.

“Personally,” says the artist, “I have never strayed from the first idea that I later realized: the Chariot of Fire of Elijah ’the word that inflames,’ the one who reads and explains must enter the chariot that becomes one with the work.” In this environmental passage Giannetti grasps a formal possibility. The chariot becomes a metaphor for that environment other than the sensible from which the prophet speaks. Spiritual, inner environment that is projected outward. In this he is very close to recent studies on communication that identify destructive effects in those who listen to speeches delivered by people “whose inner environment” is affected by psychic pathology. As if the definable personal and private environment of these people influences the living of others. Here Giannetti’s chariot driven by the fire that biblically represents divine justice becomes a space (tribune) from which to speak but also a reflection on which space one speaks from, because from it one determines the influence in the listener. Fire that has a seminal, germinative meaning, as formalized by the honeycombs of the spokes of the chariot that refers to oriental forms citing the dialogue that the author has long established in a privileged way with China.

A chariot made of precious marble and gold inserts, of small intimate size, is repeated as in a visual sequence that dialogues with the space around it, a suspension of the everyday as a figurative idea that suddenly bursts into the mundane, so that those who want to can get on it with their whole selves thus also becoming a metaphor for the artist’s prophetic making. On display in the jewelbox are gold and silver jewelry made by the artist himself, who has long had a happy dialogue with jewelry.

For more information about the exhibition The Chariot of Fire, it is possible to contact inner room at 0577 43160/7, send an e-mail to innerroom1@gmail.com, or visit www.inner-room.org or www.radioarte.it.

Emanuele Giannetti was born in Lucignano d’Asso in 1958 and attended the “Duccio di Buoninsegna” State Institute of Art in Siena. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara he attended the course of Sculpture and Design and had the opportunity to work with Bruno Munari, Sambonet, Gregorietti, Enzo Mari, Luciano Fabro, and especially Silvio Coppola, with whom he studied design and in whose Milan studio he was active as a collaborator for about a year. With Pier Carlo Santini, in 1982-83, he designs new urban furnishing hypotheses in the historic center of Lucca and collaborates on the design and staging of the works at the Ragghianti center in the cloister of San Micheletto in Lucca. He creates monumental works in Germany and Korea, and in Italy he creates public works in Cassina Rizzardi (Como), Peschici (Foggia), San Quirico d’Orcia (Siena), Rapolano Terme ( Siena), Maslianico (Como), Cento (Ferrara), and Pontedera (Pisa). He is invited to the Mestna Galerija in Ljubljana, and to the Biennale in Murska Sobota (Slovenia). He was invited in residence by the City of Munich, where he made a permanent installation in the exhibition space. He has made medals and trophies at major events and manifestations such as the commemorative medal for Bologna European City of Culture in the year 2000. He created in collaboration with sculptor Lello Scorselli the Altar, Chair and ambo for St. Peter’s Cathedral in Bologna. He is included in the catalog of Italian Medallists, he made the new liturgical adjustment in Carpi Cathedral. In China in Longli he made a monumental work, participated in numerous art biennials and is in the permanent collection at the National Museum in Beijing. His works are in important private and public collections. He currently holds the Chair of Marble Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. He opened as an international guest artist at the Shezen Biennale.

inner room© is an art production label established in Siena in 2010 originally as a 7-square-meter underground space literally below street level inside the historic fusi&fusi store. It organizes cyclically at its headquarters and in different places exhibitions and meetings involving contemporary art talents in the multiple realities of research and production of the company itself, all for the spiritual, social and economic growth of the people who are and who pass through Siena. Because of its nature, it also adapts to dialogue with operational and productive realities of various directions, seemingly distant to contemporary art, succeeding according to its purpose to identify the potential of the space, foster the birth and develop the work/human dialogue by combining the language of art with the enhancement of meaning of the reality that hosts it. inner room presents for each exhibition an artist’s jewel.

In the photo: Emanuele Giannetti’s Chariot of Fire.

Emanuele Giannetti's Chariot of Fire is on display in Siena.

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