In Arzignano, Atipografia dedicates a solo exhibition to Piero Fogliati and the construction of the fantastic city

The art gallery Atipografia presents La città fantastica, a solo exhibition dedicated to Piero Fogliati (Canelli, 1930 - Turin, 2016) open to the public from May 25 to September 14, 2024 in Arzignano, Vicenza, in the spaces of the old family print shop that Elena Dal Molin has transformed into an exhibition space dedicated to contemporary art. The exhibition, produced in collaboration with theFogliati Archive, is the first event that Atipografia dedicates to a historicized artist and features a selection of ten sculptures made by Piero Fogliati between 1968 and 1993.

The leitmotif of the exhibition is the research and construction of the fantastic city, a project that the artist inaugurated starting in the early 1960s in response to the progressive spread of the urbanization phenomenon and its impact on the environment and landscape. On display in the exhibition are a series of drawings representing “the fantastic city.” The urban structure is the undisputed protagonist of the artist’s creative universe, which responds to the pervasive technological development by imagining an ideal city where every artificial unit interacts with the natural element. Piero Fogliati’s “fantastic city” is articulated as a true urban design where each work draws on the artist’s fascination with technical-scientific knowledge to reproduce a unique sensory experience. With the exhibition The Fantastic City, the artist’s imagination combines nature and technology, creating unexpected synergies, playing with the visitor’s perception to create real sensory experiences.

Notes on the artist

Born in 1930 and originally from Canelli, Piero Fogliati has lived and worked mainly in Turin. Starting in the 1950s he devoted himself to the visual arts, experimenting as a self-taught painterly expression, both figurative and abstract-informal. The search for a personal style and confidence in the autonomy of artistic language were soon combined with a strong passion for science and technology. Exploring sensory perception and natural phenomena, Fogliati builds machines with a sublime and refined aesthetic connected to the visual-acoustic sphere. Fogliati combines beauty and perception, manifesting his confidence in imagination but also his sincere and joyful affection for man. In fact, the artist’s works are linked to the conception of the Fantastic City, a vast project of urban interventions in which sounds, lights, atmospheric elements and hydrogeological ecosystems are transformed into aesthetic and sensory experiences (a “global dream” that Fogliati developed from the early 1960s). This period includes his first solo exhibitions in Florence, Rome and Turin, up to his participation in the two Venice Biennales in 1978 and 1986, the Japanese ARTEC Biennial in Nagoya in 1997, the exhibition FASTER! BIGGER! BETTER! Signet works of the collections in 2006 dedicated to contemporary art of the last fifty years at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. The Turin consecration came in 2003 with a major anthological exhibition entitled “Piero Fogliati the poet of light.” His works are at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, the Museion in Bolzano, the Municipal Gallery in Cagliari, the MACRO in Rome, the ZKM in Karlsruhe, the Technorama der Schweiz Museum in Winterthur, the Musée de l’énergie électrique in Mulhouse, the AT&T Foundation, the “Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie” in Paris (which in 1992 dedicated to him the solo exhibition “Sculpter l’invisible”), as well as in numerous important private collections, including the Giuliano Gori Foundation in Santomato, the Panza di Biumo Collection in Lugano, and the VAF-Stiftung in Frankfurt am Main, whose works are on loan to the MART in Rovereto. Piero Fogliati passed away in Turin on March 25, 2016, at the age of 86.

For all info you can visit www.atipografia.it/home

Hours: Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Image: Piero Fogliati and the Hermeneuts, 1988 (from Museion Sound catalog)

In Arzignano, Atipografia dedicates a solo exhibition to Piero Fogliati and the construction of the fantastic city

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