Halfway through the 7 exhibitions of the RE-GENESIS cycle with two new artists
expressing in their own way the theme of the creation of living beings
Alberto Salvetti and Lucio Pozzi compared with techniques almost at opposite poles.
Instinct before Reason, from the RE-GENESIS cycle,
a dual exhibition on environmental themes and criticism of the system
from March 9th to July 14th, 2024
Exhibition curated by Sandro Orlandi Stagl and Chiara Franceschini
Opening on March 9th from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Projects by ARTantide Gallery for the Arte Etica Movement
The fifth exhibition of the RE-GENESIS cycle, Instinct before Reason, presents an artist from the Ethical Art Movement (Alberto Salvetti) and a Special Guest (Lucio Pozzi) who are juxtaposed by the curators in a contrasting dialogue on current ecological themes and how the art system and society in general always try to channel free thought in a preferred direction.
Alberto Salvetti continues his artistic research always accompanied by social intent, with the aim of spreading culture and respect for wild nature and the possibility of coexistence with human settlements.
The artist, also a valuable activist, considers the signals that come from nature, even the seemingly most dangerous ones, as true indicators of the general health of the territory and the environment both locally and globally.
The 5th day of creation, the one in which biblically flora and fauna appeared on earth, becomes the starting point for reflection to make visitors understand that human beings have an absolute need to seek and find the best possible way to manage coexistence with nature in its broadest completeness, respecting biodiversity and the reciprocal spaces that man must grant to himself and to the animals and plants that populate our lands.
Whether they are products of evolution or of divine placement, living beings belong to a balanced plane that has made our planet a paradise that must be respected for the good of all, man first and foremost.
Lucio Pozzi, unveiling a colorful bouquet of sometimes anthropomorphic flowers, provokes the visitor to question the concept of standardization, which is never of nature but often of culture, which, if too free, can become uncomfortable for those in power.
The artist, recounting the creative process behind the floral works, says: "The series I call Flower Paintings was started by me in New York as part of a fundamental exhibition in 1980 in which I exhibited 80 works all extremely different from each other but all related to painting. It was my way of freeing myself from absurd rules like programmed coherence and originality, product recognizability, apparent novelty. I was refining the radical pluralism that frees both the viewer and the artist. Today I can build something simple made of almost nothing and tomorrow make it complex, without having to justify myself. At that time, painting a vase from which or into which blooming forms were emerging was a powerful taboo, and then exhibiting them at Weber's, in the temple of conceptualism and minimalism, was almost blasphemous. It was fantastic that John had the courage to support an exhibition like that, which signaled the opinion that the intensity of art arises outside the schemes.
Once I started the flower paintings, I never stopped returning to them, just as I never stop evolving the other families of my works, and now the methods and forms blend and branch in a thousand directions without me even realizing it."
Instinct before Reason
5th day, creation of all beings on Earth
Guided tours of the Museum can be booked by calling the ticket office
We have activated a service dedicated to customers and collectors who can ask direct questions to the artists and the curator through the exhibition organizer, writing to: paolo.mozzo@artantide.com.
Instinct before Reason
From March 9th to July 14th, 2024
Location: Diocesan Museum of Vicenza, Piazza Duomo, 12 - Vicenza
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday from 2:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Vernissage: March 8th, 2024, at 6:00 PM
Artists: Alberto Salvetti, Lucio Pozzi
Artistic Director and Curator: Sandro Orlandi Stagl
Curator: Chiara Franceschini
Coordination and organization: Francesco Gasparini and Paolo Mozzo
Organizational Secretariat: Manuela Mantiero
Author of critical texts: Francesco Gasparini, Chiara Franceschini, artist interviews by Sandro Orlandi Stagl, educational texts by Filippo Bontempi
Biography of Alberto Salvetti
Born in Vicenza, Alberto Salvetti after completing his technical-artistic high school diploma and his first work experiences, decided to continue his artistic studies. In 1998, he attended sculpture and painting courses at the Complutense Academy of Madrid, graduating as a sculptor with top marks from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice in 2001.
During his frequent trips to Buenos Aires, he met the important international masters of the Galeria Maman who influenced his artistic formation, including Nicolas Garcia Uriburu and Luis Benedit. In the early 2000s, he collaborated on an artwork at the Venice Biennale in contact with Carolyn Carlson for a tribute to Beuys, and subsequently with the craftsmen of the Chinese sculptors of Cai Guo Qiang.
Some of his public works can be visited at the Museum of the 1st Army of the Pasubio Military Shrine, the naturalistic Museum of Montecchio Maggiore, and in a couple of sites of the ULSS 6 Vicenza. In 2005, he won a tender: "Art Circles: roundabouts between aesthetics and territory promotion" where he conceived a roundabout as a self-service for plant and animal species.
In collaboration with the UlSS 6 Vicenza District, for many years he was the trainer and artistic referent of the Artelabio Project, with which he opened theater and sculpture workshops for psychophysical disabled people to make them a moment of social integration and free for art lovers.
For 19 years he was responsible for the activities and then the artistic workshops and biodiversity for a Day Center for Mental Health.
In his artistic career, he has been seen performing in performances that increasingly involve him with the world of animals, which he has always loved and defines as messengers of another spirituality.
Among the most notable performances we want to mention:
the bed sleep for Festa Ambiente in Vicenza in 2011 (where, covered in mud from morning to evening, he built the 14 main animals of the Park in mud and hay); the angel's song in the Cascate Woods in Calvene (where he locked himself in a birdcage for raptors for hours); the face of a cage for the night of the homeless in Piazza Delle Poste in Vicenza (where he publicly renounced his image); Another look with professional actor Carlo Presotto in Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza (where he brought a concrete deer weighing 60 kg into the city); Regular slave offers in the ancient popular fair of Grisignano Di Zocco and at LIBEREPERSONELIBERE in Venice (where he put himself up for sale to the public for 12 hours with a fixed-term slavery contract); The wind of the bear (where he crossed Bassano Del Grappa with a bear on his shoulder); Walking with Wolves (150 km in 3 days walking with a backpack and the she-wolf on his shoulder through the Trentino snows), Pedido ao Jabali Conquistador (at the Curitiba Biennale in Brazil).
With curator Anna Caterina Bellati he exhibits in important exhibitions with NASA, ESA in Germany, and at Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice. Guest of honor at the fifth Biennale of Chiavenna with the installation exhibited in Piazza Cervo, wild boar and deer in cement, he continued his crossings of city spaces with wolves and bears.
The animal sculptures are life-size, made with newspaper sheets that speak of the return of large wild carnivores to territories inhabited by man. For Salvetti, the return of certain animals indicates the health of a certain environment, and from this depends the same health of man.
Since 2017, he has been part of the group of social artists who have been included in the Arte Etica Movement by the Artantide.com gallery in Verona. His urban crossings with the sculpture of the she-wolf on his shoulder saw him collaborate in the International LIFE WOLFALPS Project and with the MUSE of Trento, from this also came a book Walking with wolves (Artantide.com Edition).
In 2018, after the Arteology exhibition at the archaeological museum of Venice, where he exhibited with Arte Etica also Michelangelo Pistoletto, he collaborated with the Provincial Authorities of Vicenza and Venice in the River projects in which he presented the Aquarium Bins with which he was able to release native fish into the Retrone river. In 2019 he was involved in the Voices in the River project in collaboration with Science Gallery International, with the canoe crossing of the Bacchiglione river, in which he collected interviews that will serve as documentation for the upcoming book on water.
Still with Arte Etica, he exhibited at the Curitiba Biennale in Brazil, where he came into contact with native communities and where his proposal to plant a tree for each artist from this year and for all the next editions of the important international event was accepted.
From January to March 2020, in conjunction with the Biennale of Brazil, Salvetti was invited by Dr. Chiara Franceschini, organizer of cultural events and art exhibitions, to exhibit in his hometown on the occasion of ViOff and in collaboration with the Municipality of Vicenza.
This important participation lays the groundwork for the development of further intercontinental projects, already approved and presented in Italy and in the South of Brazil, which see sensitive realities to environmental, cultural, educational, and historical issues as protagonists (Similar Projeto - Italy Brazil educational project; TERREXSTRA - creative-scientific missions in collaboration with B-Lab Learning Space of Passo Fundo-BR).
Salvetti is also involved in informative evenings dealing with biodiversity, territory, and health in collaboration with authors and writers from the territory such as Giancarlo Ferron and Daniele Zovi.
In September 2023, he participates in the Futurism Biennale, organized by Miti e Mete at Villa Da Porto Barbaran in Montorso Vicentino.
Brief Biography of Lucio Pozzi
Lucio Pozzi is an artist from New York who now lives and works in Valeggio sul Mincio (VR) and Hudson (NY). He was born in 1935 in Milan. After living for a few years in Rome where he studied architecture, he arrived in the United States in 1962 as a guest of the Harvard International Summer Seminar. He immediately settled in New York and became an American citizen. After a while, his art began to be exhibited in galleries such as Ariete, Bykert, John Weber, Gianenzo Sperone, Yvon Lambert, Leo Castelli.
Pozzi is a painter who loves to paint and at the same time pursue his interests even in contexts not strictly pictorial. In 1978, the Museum of Modern Art in New York viewed a personal exhibition of Pozzi's videotapes in one of the first presentations of the Projects: Video series. The artist often constructs large and small installations and organizes performances. Occasionally, he enjoys writing and has taught at the Cooper Union, the Sculpture Graduate Program at Yale University, Princeton University, and the Maryland Institute of Art. He is occasionally a visiting professor in the MFA and BFA programs of various academies in the USA and Europe.
His art is found in the following collections: The New York Public Library; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Fogg Museum, Harvard U. Cambridge Mass.; Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art, Prato, Italy; Giuseppe Panza Di Biumo, Lugano, Switzerland; Herbert and Dorothy Vogel, New York; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Museum of New Art, Detroit, MI.; Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ.; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, MI; Hartford Atheneum, Hartford, CT; Portofino Sculpture Museum, Italy; Museum of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires, University of California Art Museum (Berkeley); Miami Art Museum, Miami, Florida; Maramotti Collection, Reggio Emilia, Italy; Cariverona Foundation, Verona, Italy; CAMUSAC Museum of Cassino; Palazzo Te, Mantua, and various private and corporate collections.
Pozzi was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts in 1983 and an Honorary Degree from the Accademia di Verona in 2010. Ciampi L'altrarte Prize 2015.
Retrospectives of his art have been held at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld (1982) and the Badischer Kunstverein (1983) in Germany, at the Museum of New Art, Detroit (2001) and the Kalamazoo Institute of Art, Michigan (2002), at the Villa Croce Museum, Genoa, Italy, (2006); Fabrikculture, Hegenheim (Basel), 2011. His art was included in Documenta 6 (1977) and in the Venice Biennale (American Pavilion) (1980).
A major exhibition of his art included among the ancient works of the museum took place in 2019 at the Ducal Palace of Mantua.