NATURES
. ART AND ECOLOGY at Galleria Civica, Trento

For some time we still have the chance to freely come to a decision, that is following a different flow from the one we went through in the past. We still can decide to align our intelligence to that of nature.
Joseph Beuys

Using the language of contemporary art and the works of some of the leading artists of our time, the Civic Gallery offers a topical and urgent investigation of ecology. Starting with the original definition coined by scientist Ernst Haeckel in 1866, Margherita de Pilati, the exhibition’s curator has developed an exhibition that includes the different aspects that the term “ecology” holds today. From the commitment of environmentalists to political duty, passing via philosophy, economics, consumerism, the concept of ecology has become part of the themes of contemporary ethics and stresses particularly the notions of connection and responsibility. These constitute the basis of Natures. Art and ecology, an exhibition exploring the connection between human beings and nature in a striving for different forms of empathy.

While leaving space for contemplation and the appeal that a vision of nature has always stimulated, the exhibition revolves around the intervention of man and the transformations that are their consequence. Not simply a guest but the protagonist and agent of a relation offering infinite possibilities, man appropriates, manipulates, identifies and maintains a dialogue with the environment in which by lives by chance or by choice.
In the exploration of these Natures, the artists reforge a strong and unbreakable bond: lived or exploited, contemplated or used, nature is inseparable from man. In perceiving, knowing and describing it. artists are at the same time an object set in reality and an external, narrating subject.

The exhibition comprises approximately 50 works by leading international artists, including Matthew Barney, Joseph Beuys, Christo, Tony Cragg, Olafur Eliasson, Petrit Halilaj, Ibrahim Mahama, Antoni Tàpies, and major Italian artists like Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mario Schifano, Willy Verginer and the younger Stefano Cagol, Davide Coltro, Francesco Matuzzi, Arcangelo Sassolino and Elisa Sighicelli.
Confirming the vocation of the Galleria Civica and its ties with the territory, also on show there will be the works of David Aaron Angeli, Juri Neil, Marco Nones, Michele Parisi and Federico Seppi in a fresh dialogue between local and international.
Starting from the suggestions offered by some of the works present in the Mart’s collections, with the addition of loans from galleries and private collections, the exhibition seeks to accompany the visitor along a free, heterogeneous and non-dogmatic itinerary, following one of the leitmotifs of the contemporary debate.
Works of art with a strong political content are thus flanked by sometimes ironic or more lyrical ones, in a varied exploration of the relationship between man and nature, which has always been the object of analysis and at the same time inspiration for scholars, researchers and artists.


Artists present in the exhibition:
David Aaron Angeli, Matthew Barney, Joseph Beuys, Corrado Bonomi, Alik Cavaliere, Stefano Cagol, Christo, Davide Coltro, Tony Cragg, Olafur Eliasson, Robert Gschwantner, Petrit Halilaj, Hubert Kostner, Ajay Kurian, Richard Loskot, Ibrahim Mahama, Francesco Mattuzzi, Marcelo Moscheta, Vlad Nanca, Juri Neil, Marco Nones, Michele Parisi, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Rob Pruitt, Andrea Salvetti, Arcangelo Sassolino, Stefano Scheda, Mario Schifano, Federico Seppi, Elisa Sighicelli, Michael E. Smith, Antoni Tàpies, Su-Mei Tse, Willy Verginer, Gal Weinstein.  

NATURES
. ART AND ECOLOGY
Galleria Civica, Trento
30 October 2015 ― 31 January 2016
Curator: Margherita de Pilati