Albatross

source: lagiostrabiz

Piero Gilardi ( nato nel 1942) è uno scultore torinese, anche se la sua famiglia è di origini svizzere; ha sempre creato opere d’arte che facciano divertire, ma anche riflettere. Ama viaggiare, moltissimo: dagli Stati Uniti ai paesi europei, ha conosciuto artisti originali come lui. Di tutti i suo i viaggi ha raccolto tantissime fotografie.

I suoi “tappeti natura” rappresentano immagini precise e frammenti di paesaggio naturale di campagna, di bosco, di torrente e sono ricchi di tutti i colori delle stagioni. Con queste opere lui dice quanto oggi contino gli oggetti artificiali, a scapito della natura e dei suoi paesaggi meravigliosi.

Per lui, infatti, l’artista non deve solo creare, ma anche aiutare la società a interrogarsi sui propri errori. Con la sua arte ha ideato un Parco d’Arte Vivente, in cui racconta i suoi sentimenti per la natura mortificata e stravolta dalla società industrializzata.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: artinamericamagazine

One of the most idealistic—and elusive—figures associated with the early Arte Povera movement, Turin-based artist Piero Gilardi was widely recognized in the early 1960s for his experiments with unorthodox materials and sculptural forms that radically diverged from the avant-garde mainstream. His much-acclaimed and often controversial “Tappeti-natura” (Nature-carpets)—floor installations and wall reliefs made of meticulously molded and painted polyurethane foam that take the form of rocks, plants and a wide variety of nature studies—brought him substantial critical and commercial success through the ’60s. He grew disillusioned with the art world, however, and, by the early 1970s, ceased making art, abruptly exiting the scene.

Gilardi (b. 1942) spent the next 10 years traveling in Italy and abroad, writing theoretical analyses of society and culture, the focus of his thinking during this period of civil upheaval. A number of these essays appeared in Flash Art, Arts and other art publications. He organized street theater, actions and protests in factories, and participated in various community outreach programs and political initiatives, particularly during extended stays in Nicaragua and Kenya, as well as in the U.S., on the Akwesanse Reservation of the Mohawk Nation in northern New York State, along the Canadian border.

Just as suddenly as he had disappeared, Gilardi reentered the art world in 1983, to begin a new series of works and also to prepare for retrospective exhibitions held the following year at Galleria Toselli, Milan, and the Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara. He worked on a fresh series of Nature-carpets, although his main focus was on new-media works, including virtual reality pieces, interactive installations and what would now be called relational art projects that encompass political activism and community-based endeavors, all centered on the precarious bonds between nature and society. Critics and public alike have found new relevance in his environmentalist themes. As his interests have shifted toward Bio-art, or what he terms “living art,” Gilardi has settled into his new roles as a “rediscovered” doyen of Arte Povera and a mentor for younger artists. Since the mid-1980s, he has had numerous gallery shows throughout Italy and abroad (including a 1991 exhibition at New York’s Sperone Westwater), featuring interactive installations and performances as well as the Nature-carpets. Earlier this year, the Nature-carpets were on view at Galleria Russo venues in Rome and Milan [Mar. 9-Apr. 9]. A Gilardi career survey, “The Lesson of the Things,” opens this summer at the Centre de Création Contemporain (C.C.C.), Tours, France. His early works are included in “Che fare? Arte Povera: The Historical Years,” now at the Kunstmuseum Lichtenstein in Vaduz.

For the past eight years, Gilardi has been preoccupied by Parco Arte Vivente (Park of Living Art), or PAV, his most ambitious endeavor to date. In late 2008, Gilardi unveiled the work in progress, and last year a series of educational programs were launched. A collaborative effort that he conceived and designed (he currently serves as its artistic director), PAV is a monumental undertaking situated on an approximately 6-acre green space in the heart of the Lingotto section of Turin.

Surrounded by high-rise housing and industrial buildings, PAV encompasses a new museum and study center with laboratories, workshops and spaces for temporary and permanent exhibitions, including “Bioma,”a permanent, multi-gallery, new-media installation by Gilardi. The grounds are reserved for sprawling earth art and ecologically engaged outdoor installations by an international group of invited artists, with a special focus on young and emerging talent. This season, PAV hosts a variety of exhibitions, outdoor installations and performances [details available on the park’s website, www.parcoartevivente.it].

Gilardi’s career has had a unique trajectory. In his early 20s, he garnered substantial critical attention as a participant, with Michelangelo Pistoletto and Gianni Piacentino, in the exhibition “Arte Abitabile” (Live-in Art), held in 1966 at Sperone Gallery, Turin.1 With its emphasis on reductive forms and mundane materials, the show was perceived by many Italian observers as marking a clear break with the pervasive consumerist iconography of Pop art, which then dominated the international scene. The exhibition featured a large rectangular Nature-carpet that resembles a dry rocky riverbed. After experimenting with polyurethane foam to produce a sculpture in the form of an igloo (1964), Gilardi, with the help of assistants, adapted the material for the Nature-carpets. The works have an interactive element, as the artist invited viewers to walk across or lie down on the soft pieces in an attempt to evoke the experience of being in nature.

Gilardi’s work in the Sperone exhibition was lauded by influential critics such as Maurizio Calvesi, Tommaso Trini and, most significantly, Germano Celant, who recognized Gilardi’s kinship with a new movement in Italian art he dubbed Arte Povera (Poor Art) in 1967. Included in major Arte Povera exhibitions with Alighiero Boetti, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolini, Jannis Kounellis, Gilberto Zorio, Giovanni Anselmo and Pistoletto, Gilardi’s sculptures were attuned to the movement’s radical efforts to merge art and life in a wide variety of mediums and materials, and in live performances.

Much was written at the time about Gilardi’s ironic choice of high-tech industrial materials to evoke organic forms and natural environments. This ambiguous nature/artifice dichotomy still lends the works a certain degree of tension and contributes to their provocative allure. The artist maintains, however, that his concept was to merge technology and nature—not to set them in opposition—and to suggest a homeostasis whereby industrial processes and materials could actually help in focusing society on the nascent environmentalist movement.2 Also misunderstood is the work’s relationship to hyperrealist sculpture, whose Pop art roots are far removed from Gilardi’s thematic concerns.

Surprising some of his peers, the Nature-carpets (at times delivered to the galleries in huge rolls and sold to collectors by the yard) had broad commercial appeal. Life-size and lifelike sculptural renderings of bucolic scenes, such as a leafy garden of ripe tomatoes, a cornfield at harvest time, tangled strands of seaweed undulating above a sandy ocean floor, a bamboo forest, a cabbage patch and a verdant field of melons proved irresistible to collectors. In the two years following “Arte Abitabile,” Gilardi presented Nature-carpets in over a dozen solo shows in Italy and abroad, including major exhibitions in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Cologne and New York.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: elcultural

Piero Gilardi nació en Turín en 1942 y formó parte de la generación de artistas que reencauzó a través del Povera la escena artística italiana en los años sesenta, tras la dura posguerra europea. Si bien su obra durante estos años no tuvo el eco de otros como Zorio, Merz, Calzolari, Anselmo, Fabro o Penone, su papel como agitador intelectual es sencillamente trascendental para entender la efervescencia del momento. Turín se convirtió, entonces, en una de las ciudades más dinámicas de Europa, y, como Amsterdam, fue destino habitual de muchísimos artistas europeos y estadounidenses. En aquel Turín, Gilardi entró en contacto con los neosurrealistas primero y con Pistoletto algo más tarde. A mediados de los sesenta afloraron en Italia brotes cibernéticos que Gilardi saludaría con entusiasmo, una estética a la que se aferraría en su interés por la utopía y por la posibilidad de construir un futuro mejor. De una forma tan natural como paradójica, esta cibernética enraizaría con asuntos íntimamente ligados al Futurismo italiano, movimiento, como se sabe, de penosas connotaciones por su relación con los embriones del totalitarismo.

Uno de los grupos de trabajo más conocidos de Gilardi, que comenzó a realizar en esta época, son sus tapetti-natura, o alfombras de naturalezas. Son trabajos realizados con poliuretano expandido, que trascienden la bidimensionalidad de la pintura aunque en su esencia reside la representación de la naturaleza. Dice Gilardi que la obra tiene claras conexiones con el Pop, pero mientras la deriva del pop americano, formalizada en artistas como Rosenquist y Wesselman, sólo podía desembocar en el arte minimal, esto es, un frío y mudo reflejo de la sociedad industrial, el suyo, como el de muchos de su compañeros de generación, prefería centrarse en un discurso de mayor carga utópica, mas historicista, pendiente siempre de las vinculaciones entre la naturaleza y la cultura.

En sus tapetti nature, Gilardi buscaba una reacción social. Quería que la gente pudiera tumbarse, pasar tiempo sobre ella o ponérselas como si fueran ropa. Vivir en y con ellas, en definitiva. Son, así, precursoras de no pocas actitudes que se darían más tarde, ya en los noventa, en lo que se dio en llamar estética relacional. Fueron un verdadero éxito, y con ellas participó en un gran número de exposiciones en galerías e instituciones. Tanto es así, que Gilardi pronto comprendió que no podía continuarlas, que la fabricación de objetos se le había ido de las manos. Hacia 1968, cuando el arte Povera, al que tanto había contribuido, se consolidaba ya en Italia, dejó de hacer arte para convertirse en uno de los intelectuales y teóricos más sagaces e influyentes del momento. Si la primera parte de esta exposición se detiene ante muchos de estos primeros trabajos, la segunda lo hace ante ese papel tan vital que jugó a posteriori.

La exposición lleva por título Collaborative Effects y tras su arranque en el Castello de Rivoli de Turín, una de las instituciones históricas italianas, se detendrá en el Van Abbemuseum de Eindhoven, Holanda, y más tarde en Nottingham Contemporary, Reino Unido. Será especialmente interesante la escala en Eindhoven para comprobar el enorme papel que jugó Gilardi en la consolidación de las nuevas formas de arte en el país neerlandés. El turinés, ya alejado de la creación, tuvo una intensa relación de amistad con algunos de los artistas más relevantes del momento, en especial con Ger van Elk, Marinus Boezem y Jan Dibbets.

Gilardi formó parte de las decisivas conversaciones que dieron lugar a las exposiciones seminales, ambas de 1969, When Attitudes Become Form, dirigida por Harald Szeemann en la Kunsthalle de Berna (que viajaría más tarde al ICA de Londres) y Op Losse Schroeven (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), dirigida por Wim Beeren, una exposición de enorme calado a la que la historia ha tratado injustamente, eclipsada por la enorme fama de When Attitudes… y el poderoso magnetismo de su comisario. El propio Beeren no tendría reparos en admitir la enorme influencia que había tenido Gilardi en el génesis de su exposición. Escribió los textos de ambas muestras aunque finalmente no apareció en el catálogo de la exposición de Szeemann. En el de Amsterdam, habló de la necesidad de un “encuentro epidérmico entre los artistas de todo el mundo”. Poner en relación al mayor número de artistas posibles a la luz de un espíritu utópico ha sido siempre su gran batalla.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: lespressesdureel

Piero Gilardi (né en 1942 à Turin) fut, au milieu des années 1960, l’inventeur des « tapis-nature » : une proposition originale et profondément écologiste qui le fit connaître sur la scène internationale et témoigna de l’impact du Pop Art en Europe. Artiste itinérant, organisateur très actif et théoricien ouvert, il contribua ensuite à la naissance de l’Arte Povera, travaillant tout particulièrement à l’établissement de relations fructueuses avec d’autres initiatives du même ordre apparues simultanément hors d’Italie, soutenant le travail d’artistes tels que Richard Long ou Jan Dibbets, introduisant celui de Bruce Nauman ou d’Eva Hesse en Europe.
Son engagement sans concession en faveur du resserrement des liens entre l’art et la vie vont le pousser à l’action sur le terrain de l’expérimentation collective : des formes du théâtre politique et anthropologique aux ateliers psychiatriques en passant par les combats politiques des ouvriers de Fiat dans les années 1970-80.
Dans les années 2000, Gilardi a initié le projet du « Parc d’art vivant », centre d’art en plein air installé à Turin accueillant des artistes (Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Gilles Clément, Lara Almarcegui, Michel Blazy…) mais aussi des scientifiques et surtout le public, invité à participer sous des formes actives.
Piero Gilardi apparaît ainsi comme une figure emblématique des évolutions de l’art et de la société des cinq dernières décennies, dont l’œuvre et les recherches théoriques permettent toujours d’évaluer les possibilités pour l’art d’être effectif dans le « réel ».