IN THE OPEN SKY
4 contemporary works of art for the 30th anniversary of the CRC Foundation
“A Cielo Aperto” is an initiative dedicated to lovers of contemporary art promoted by the CRC Foundation in 2022 to celebrate its 30 years of activity within the program “La generazione delle idee”. With “A Cielo Aperto”, created in collaboration with the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, the CRC Foundation donated to the territory 4 works of art by 4 internationally renowned artists located in symbolic places in the province of Cuneo.
Discover the places of contemporary art
A Song Aside
Civic Museum of Printing, Mondovì
A Song A Part is a two-channel sound installation created for the entrance of the Museo Civico della Stampa in Mondovì, a cultural center that aims to enhance the historical heritage of Mondovì linked to the theme of the book. The work, which is based on two songs by Maddalena Casulana (1544-1590), touches on the themes of separation and the desire for reunion. Maddalena Casulana is the first female composer to have an entire book of her compositions printed and published in the history of Western music.
Casulana's first book of four-voice madrigals appeared in 1568. In the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, polyphonic music was written by hand or printed in notebooks, with each part appearing separately. One part, the Alto or upper part, of Casulana's book of four-voice madrigals had been missing for years, leaving the composition fragmented and incomplete, and was recently discovered in the Biblioteca Civica in Cuneo not far from Mondovì.
Artist Susan Philipsz chose to sing two different songs from this book, recorded so that the words become abstract tones. Recorded separately and played from two separate speakers placed at the entrance to the Museum, the songs play simultaneously so that they blend and overlap, creating dissonance and harmony.
The work also refers to the birth of typographic printing, a technological revolution dating back to 1455, and in particular to the figure of Antonio Mathias, a Flemish printer, originally from Antwerp, who moved from Genoa to Mondovì where he founded in 1472, in collaboration with Baldassarre Cordero, one of the first printing houses in Italy.
“I chose to record two compositions by Maddalena Casulana for the Museo Civico della Stampa because,” the artist says, “she was the first female composer to have parts of her music printed and published. A single book, separate from the other parts, and kept in a local library, brought to mind themes of separation and desire that I thought would resonate in this former school for orphans.”
The presence of absence pavilion
Grinzane Cavour Castle
The presence of absence pavilion by Olafur Eliasson is a sculpture made of a bronze parallelepiped hollowed out inside to represent the void produced by the melting of a glacier, in reference to the ecological crisis and global warming. The work was created by melting a block of ice from the Nuup Kangerlua fjord, off the coast of Greenland, an area where the ice cap formed over millions of years is now losing tens of thousands of similar blocks every minute. In The presence of absence pavilion the now melted ice is present only as an absence or as a memory. The placement of the work on the lawn next to the Grinzane Cavour Castle, not far from the vineyard belonging to the CRC Foundation, also establishes a relationship with the action of water erosion on the hills and the memory of the ancient glaciers that once occupied the region.
Olafur Eliasson’s interest in the phenomenon of melting glaciers has been at the heart of his artistic research since 2006, with the exhibition Your waste of time held at the Neugerriemschneider Gallery in Berlin, in which blocks of Icelandic ice were exhibited in the cooled exhibition space. Between 2014 and 2019, the artist created the public art work Ice Watch, in which twelve immense blocks of ice collected from a fjord outside Nuuk, Greenland, were positioned to form a clock in public spaces in Copenhagen, Paris and London, and left to slowly melt for several days. Olafur Eliasson’s works reproduce the power of natural elements and produce perceptive and aesthetic phenomena of great impact.
The Third Paradise of Talents
Talents Roundabout, Cuneo
The Third Paradise of Talents, 2022, by Michelangelo Pistoletto is a work specifically developed by the artist for the external area of the Rondò dei Talenti in Cuneo, in relation to the curvature of the building and the structure of the square.
The Third Paradise of Talents was born as a participatory sculpture that promotes the idea of collaboration, enhancing the contribution of multiple communities in the area. The work was created from over two hundred drawings produced by children and students, who interpreted the theme of talents, expressing their abilities and aspirations.
The work is part of the great project that Pistoletto, pioneer of Arte Povera, defines Third Paradise. Intended as a set of works and actions, sometimes temporary and always shared, the Third Paradise It has the shape of three consecutive circles, a symbol that Pistoletto has been creating since the 2000s by modifying the figure eight infinity sign with the insertion of a central circle. According to the artist, if the two external circles represent the opposite poles of nature and artifice, the circle in the center represents the generative womb of a new humanity, an ideal overcoming of the destructive conflicts that characterize the present. The term paradise comes from the ancient Persian language and means “protected garden”. As the artist says, “We are the gardeners who must protect this planet and take care of the human society that inhabits it”.
Of Grounds, Guts and Stones
University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo
Otobong Nkanga has devised Of Grounds, Guts and Stones, a sculptural work consisting of a series of five marble seats, metal tubes and flowerpots that house local and seasonal aromatic plants that adapt to the climate of the Cuneo area, characterized by potentially very cold winters and very hot summers. The plants include species such as Viburnum tinus, Juniperus communis, Lavender nana hidcote, Helleborus niger – Helleborus x hybridus 'Pink', Punica granatum 'Nana', Cornus alba elegant (red) – Cornus stolonifera flaviramea (yellow), Erica darleyensis, Helichrysum, Cineraria maritima, Hypericum (erect) and Iberis sempervirens.
Nkanga's artistic research addresses urgent issues related to the ecological crisis, the exploitation of resources and sustainability, giving value to food while respecting those who produce it, in harmony with the environment and ecosystems, preserving the knowledge held by local territories and traditions. Nkanga's empathic relationship with the earth and the environment produces in those who experience his works an unprecedented cosmogony for the future. For the artist, it is better to look for what, as human beings, unites us to each other and binds us to the planet that hosts us, instead of dwelling on what separates or divides.
Rather than propose a traditional public artwork to be experienced passively and only through the gaze, the artist wanted to create a place where the local community and the students of the University of Gastronomic Sciences can meet and where native plants and minerals are harmonized in poetic relationships that also involve smell and touch. Located in the meadow of the Agenzia di Pollenzo, Nkanga's project enhances the rich history of the 19th-century Savoy site, a model farm and a place originally aimed at experimentation in the field of winemaking.
Offering a place dedicated to meeting and rest, Nkanga's work exalts the value of horticulture as a practice of regeneration in which the mixing of native plants becomes a metaphor for happy cohabitation between living beings - both human and plant - in the name of a more equitable and sustainable world.
