From 19/02/2011 to 16/03/2011

Curated by Dores Sacquegna

Uncontaminated nature in its fascinating beauty and the animals that populate it , are the starting point of all the artists involved in the show, each with their own personal style, ready to offer their point of view.

Among parks, savannas, forests, reserves, rivers, the exhibition brings alive, from the North to the South, the unexplored paradise that surrounds us and the habitat of wildlife , herds of buffalo by Elizabeth Levin, gorillas by Sergio Gotti , pelicans which dominate in the water of Pinar Selimoglu, a lone wolf by Chris Rodriguez or that infinite number of small insects that live in the photos made by Nicole Hametner. Wild nature in the photos by Vivien Schmidt.

The concept of ‘wild’ is certainly a cultural construction, based on the assumption that humanity is separate from Nature. Western society has long since ceased to live in harmony with the environment. Nature has become a commodity to be used and abused at will. What once was ‘humanized’ was considered wild, untamable. During the age of progress, modernity brought with it a pronounced dualism that exacerbates the conflict between humanity and nature, between order and chaos. The exploitation of natural resources caused a huge increase in population which led to a subsequent increase of urbanization, squalor, pollution and environmental destruction.

Therefore, the approach to nature can stimulate a recovery of identity, of what has been lost and the importance of respect for biodiversity and the land and animals that inhabit it. Organic architecture promotes harmony between man and nature in the photographs by Sarah Girner, which show through the integration of structures (houses, furniture, etc.), the creation of a new system in balance between the constructed environment and the natural environment, anticipated by the master founder Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939.

Milena Popovic Javonovic shows a series of postcards of cities like Paris, Rome, and New York, noting the weakness of the contemporary city, threatened by external enemies and dark destroyers. The cities represented seem to disintegrate into waterways like a biblical story or emerge from volcanic cracks. The nature of the sophists introduces the concept of a state of nature where man’s behavior does not differ from those of other natural beings based on primal instincts that man retains in spite of the cultural diversity gained over time. The artwork by Massimo Ruiu in “trophy” a black silhouette of a wolf is at the center of the skin, and here emerges the claim that man as a “political animal” as the objectification of the relationship between law and nature.

East and West, in the archaic totems by Greek Polyxene Kasda, as a mantra for the regeneration of nature to recover the ancient relationship between body and spirit. In nature, there is a secret plot by mysterious influences that man, because of microcosm reflecting macrocosm in itself, can enter because he is basically akin to nature as shown in the images of Jean Peterson.

Democritus’s conception of nature as pure matter, can bee seen on the iron sculpture “Tree of infinity” by Salvatore Sava, an aggregation of atoms made ​​up of many circles and magic symbols that interlock to form the structure of a tree that stands to up. Defined bodies of perceived reality and their break-up seems to give back to nature itself its basic elements, in a purely mechanistic phenomenology that does not need anything else to happen. Portions of the sky, land and sea in the works by Kumiko Tamura, Elinore Bucholtz and Krister Paleologos.

Iginio Iurilli, with emphasis on ecological issues through a three-dimensional expression that inspired to create ,since the early ’90s, sculptures and bas-reliefs carved in wood and clay, covered with salt or marble dust or desert sand and sea ​​urchins and large flowers.

Fascinated with blue Giulio De Mitri, who in all his works (installations, light boxes, photographs and video) is constantly researching light. When installing light “flutter”, the artist with sophisticated digital processing recovers the relationship between man and nature, thanks to an operation of alchemy in modern variations of monochromatic blue. A butterfly in the center of a bronze bowl that is projected upward which is a blue sky and sea. The exhibition flows through a path of photographs, paintings, videos and installations, related to the concept of wilderness, through a comparison with nature, allowing man to know and to not lose sight of its limits. Therefore to understand how far one can go in one’s life.