Exhibitions, Italy, Genoa, Genova, 21 November 2014
OIKOS - Ecointegralist Art exhibition
21 November - 13 December 2014
Villa Spinola Narisano
Centro Civico Cornigliano
Viale Narisano 14
Genoa, Italy
Monday to Friday 9 am - 7 pm, Saturday 9 am - 1 pm. Closed on Sunday and holidays.
In collaboration with Municipality of Genoa, Cornigliano Civic Center and with the 6th Municipality Genoa Medio Ponente's patronage, CON-TEMPORARY - Art Observatorium presents OIKOS, a collective exhibition of “ecointegralist” Art curated by Jizaino to raise awareness for environmental issues. There will be exhibited painting, photography, video art and sculpture artworks by Christin Bolewski, Enrico Bovi, Gian Luigi Braggio, Natalia Carrus, DUNE, Armando Fanelli, Benna Gaean Maris, Christos Giannopoulos, Alfredo “Amars” Grelli, Mar.Gu, Mary M., Fulvio Martini, Abramo “Tepes” Montini, Leonardo Prencipe, Maya Quattropani, Orma Rapace and David Theobald.
“When we speak of Nature it is wrong to forget that we are ourselves a part of Nature.” - Henri Matisse
After a transient moment of good hope, we live an epoch of prevailing huge economical upsets that determine heavy social unfairness, anguish and injustices in all the world. So more and more war conflicts are on the raise, justified with hypocritical and fabricated reasons, which only purpose is the ravaging of the resources, mainly of the lands that were the cradle of civilisation. Many populations come under unspeakable sufferings and massacres, finding salvation only in the getaway.
In such a context of humanitarian emergency, speaking of ecology may seem of secondary importance, but it is the very altered equilibrium between human being and environment where we find the cause of all: to one side, powerful and wealthy elites sustain a system of luxurious abuse of resources where squander reach unprecedented peaks and volumes, which is followed as a model by a middle class that, just to be no less, becomes always more poor or gets into debts; to the other side, always more numerous down-and-out masses find themselves to survive with, among and of the waste for need, suffering the obvious consequences. Thus there are who is living near to the nuclear plant where he works and who travels into the urban chaos breathing smog for work; there is who believe to be lucky to live near an airport or a cell phone repeater; there is who eats junk food, who buys near to expiry date groceries at a loss, who goes to soup kitchens, who waits for the humanitarian aids thrown with the parachute, who lives in the garbage dumps sorting waste to survive. At last, there is who blame misfortune when becomes ill physically or spiritually, and then he allows to be recycled like scrap by the same system that made them sick, producing more profits.
We have been teach that living into the dirt causes illnesses, but in the name of profit the human beings seem to have forgotten this principle; or well, to not incur into penalties they have learnt how to hide and dissimulate their own waste, making them always more invisible, odourless, intangible and devious, up to transforming them in ultra thin nano-dusts; otherwise making them alluring, even pleasant.
The production of a residue is always inherently an anti-economic and anti-ecological act.
In every field always more new artificial substances are invented, as much valuable as polluting: solid, gaseous, biological, nuclear or electromagnetic. The contamination is so much ubiquitous, pervading and creeping that it does spare no one.
From a naturalistic point of view, the technological discoveries usually considered products most of the times are not so much different from garbage: both pollute for their artificial nature.
Even many of the materials and processes with which artworks are made cause pollution, therefore also all this exhibition, but we can accept the extenuation that everybody is son of his epoch and to speak of change it is necessary to start from where we find ourselves, using what we have and in a way that can be understood by contemporaneity; moreover it is useful to display the body of evidence as much as the weapon used to commit the crime.
In that sense Video Art, although it depends too on not so eco-friendly technologies, it could be considered an ecological evolution of classic visual arts, because it dematerializes the artwork reducing it just to its most important essence, that is the message that it transmits by means of its virtual image, its incorporeal ghost, thus relieving the environment from the weight of new material products / garbage.
In the sphere of environmentalism, I consider that more than the lack of information, it is more detrimental the misinformation, which is extremely sought by the corporations interested just in the profits generated by their huge businesses that they have tagged with an ecology false label.
Sometimes also the artists are unknowingly part of that game, trusting the slogans that are passed off like mantras by mass media, hence I wanted to impress to the exhibition my personal opinion, carefully selecting the artworks in order to skim anything I consider an result of scams aimed to economical rather than ecological interests.
A glaring example is the waste recycling: instead of limiting the upstream production of waste, to one side they force recycling and to the other side they incite a mass distribution based on the prepackaged of retail products (e.g.: few ham slices are often on sale along with an equivalent mass of plastic) and on planned obsolescence (products / waste are not designed to last long). Therefore I have omitted one of the newest paragraphs of contemporary artistic expressions: Recycle Art with just an end in itself.
Also the theory of the supposed global warming caused by CO2, already inconsistent and vague in light of ampler independent studies, after the biased data scandal it had to change its name, becoming a more chancy climate change.
With the term ecointegralist I wanted to define a “fundamentalist” attitude strongly respectful of nature’s equilibriums. It is a hope for a change of mind on human lifestyles according to some of the precepts of ecosophy (philosophic ecology) related to the interaction between ourselves and the ecosystem, through a rapprochement with natural rhythms, circadian and seasonal cycles, a care for the fundamental principles of our existence, of out role and presence on the planet, that is the survival through our adaptation to environment and not vice versa.
Òikos: Greek «house, residence, family»
There is a certain culture portraying the environmentalist and ecological feeling as expression of a fanaticism; it is sarcastically nicknamed “ecotism”, with obvious assonance to egotism. They are partially right: ecology and respect for the environment really are egotism forms, or interest for one’s own safety: eco, from Greek òikos, means house, and our house is that sphere of finite extent called Earth. The one who make a mess of his own house is artless to say the least.
More and more people already have a high consciousness of the damages inflicted to the environment, and in their soul they passionately wish for a society respecting nature, but it seems that is not enough, in effect we assist to an always more frequent and insidious destruction and contamination of every aspect of the environment surrounding us. It is obvious that decisions are not made by citizenry.
Technology advances at exponential pace, creating every day new side effects to which most of the people are not prepared or are not even aware: nano-particles, biotechnologies, etcetera.
For the sake of immediate earnings, no one cares for the effect on the environment in the long term, and by now not even in the short term; in the best case, the expedients to contrast the health issues need decades to be assimilated by mass communications, so they become obsolete before they could ever be effective. To defend oneself, it is necessary to be well-informed and to understand the changes, and above all to catch the principle.
The artists can humbly offer to society their avant-garde perspicacity rising from their natural sensitivity and from the necessary observation skill, which sometimes eccentric and multifaceted spirit may lead to a wider vision of reality.
For that sake I have called artists having different languages, renowned or emerging, but all joined by a previous and disinterested personal engagement on environmental thematics, and that through their artworks have expressed themselves favouring the public denunciation of this set of problems.
Willing to win the resilience due to apathy and carelessness that prevent the action finalised to problem solving, this exhibition wants to sensitise everybody, favouring them to become conscious of realities too often omitted, concealed or marginalised into an elsewhere, and affirming that to preserve the environment where we live it is necessary also the resolute dissent combined to the free adoption of attitudes by the side of single individuals, and above all a change in the ethic of those who contribute to move those very socioeconomic gears that set the lifestyles of community.
http://jizaino.net16.net/con-temporary/
http://jizaino.net16.net/
21 November - 13 December 2014
Villa Spinola Narisano
Centro Civico Cornigliano
Viale Narisano 14
Genoa, Italy
Monday to Friday 9 am - 7 pm, Saturday 9 am - 1 pm. Closed on Sunday and holidays.
In collaboration with Municipality of Genoa, Cornigliano Civic Center and with the 6th Municipality Genoa Medio Ponente's patronage, CON-TEMPORARY - Art Observatorium presents OIKOS, a collective exhibition of “ecointegralist” Art curated by Jizaino to raise awareness for environmental issues. There will be exhibited painting, photography, video art and sculpture artworks by Christin Bolewski, Enrico Bovi, Gian Luigi Braggio, Natalia Carrus, DUNE, Armando Fanelli, Benna Gaean Maris, Christos Giannopoulos, Alfredo “Amars” Grelli, Mar.Gu, Mary M., Fulvio Martini, Abramo “Tepes” Montini, Leonardo Prencipe, Maya Quattropani, Orma Rapace and David Theobald.
“When we speak of Nature it is wrong to forget that we are ourselves a part of Nature.” - Henri Matisse
After a transient moment of good hope, we live an epoch of prevailing huge economical upsets that determine heavy social unfairness, anguish and injustices in all the world. So more and more war conflicts are on the raise, justified with hypocritical and fabricated reasons, which only purpose is the ravaging of the resources, mainly of the lands that were the cradle of civilisation. Many populations come under unspeakable sufferings and massacres, finding salvation only in the getaway.
In such a context of humanitarian emergency, speaking of ecology may seem of secondary importance, but it is the very altered equilibrium between human being and environment where we find the cause of all: to one side, powerful and wealthy elites sustain a system of luxurious abuse of resources where squander reach unprecedented peaks and volumes, which is followed as a model by a middle class that, just to be no less, becomes always more poor or gets into debts; to the other side, always more numerous down-and-out masses find themselves to survive with, among and of the waste for need, suffering the obvious consequences. Thus there are who is living near to the nuclear plant where he works and who travels into the urban chaos breathing smog for work; there is who believe to be lucky to live near an airport or a cell phone repeater; there is who eats junk food, who buys near to expiry date groceries at a loss, who goes to soup kitchens, who waits for the humanitarian aids thrown with the parachute, who lives in the garbage dumps sorting waste to survive. At last, there is who blame misfortune when becomes ill physically or spiritually, and then he allows to be recycled like scrap by the same system that made them sick, producing more profits.
We have been teach that living into the dirt causes illnesses, but in the name of profit the human beings seem to have forgotten this principle; or well, to not incur into penalties they have learnt how to hide and dissimulate their own waste, making them always more invisible, odourless, intangible and devious, up to transforming them in ultra thin nano-dusts; otherwise making them alluring, even pleasant.
The production of a residue is always inherently an anti-economic and anti-ecological act.
In every field always more new artificial substances are invented, as much valuable as polluting: solid, gaseous, biological, nuclear or electromagnetic. The contamination is so much ubiquitous, pervading and creeping that it does spare no one.
From a naturalistic point of view, the technological discoveries usually considered products most of the times are not so much different from garbage: both pollute for their artificial nature.
Even many of the materials and processes with which artworks are made cause pollution, therefore also all this exhibition, but we can accept the extenuation that everybody is son of his epoch and to speak of change it is necessary to start from where we find ourselves, using what we have and in a way that can be understood by contemporaneity; moreover it is useful to display the body of evidence as much as the weapon used to commit the crime.
In that sense Video Art, although it depends too on not so eco-friendly technologies, it could be considered an ecological evolution of classic visual arts, because it dematerializes the artwork reducing it just to its most important essence, that is the message that it transmits by means of its virtual image, its incorporeal ghost, thus relieving the environment from the weight of new material products / garbage.
In the sphere of environmentalism, I consider that more than the lack of information, it is more detrimental the misinformation, which is extremely sought by the corporations interested just in the profits generated by their huge businesses that they have tagged with an ecology false label.
Sometimes also the artists are unknowingly part of that game, trusting the slogans that are passed off like mantras by mass media, hence I wanted to impress to the exhibition my personal opinion, carefully selecting the artworks in order to skim anything I consider an result of scams aimed to economical rather than ecological interests.
A glaring example is the waste recycling: instead of limiting the upstream production of waste, to one side they force recycling and to the other side they incite a mass distribution based on the prepackaged of retail products (e.g.: few ham slices are often on sale along with an equivalent mass of plastic) and on planned obsolescence (products / waste are not designed to last long). Therefore I have omitted one of the newest paragraphs of contemporary artistic expressions: Recycle Art with just an end in itself.
Also the theory of the supposed global warming caused by CO2, already inconsistent and vague in light of ampler independent studies, after the biased data scandal it had to change its name, becoming a more chancy climate change.
With the term ecointegralist I wanted to define a “fundamentalist” attitude strongly respectful of nature’s equilibriums. It is a hope for a change of mind on human lifestyles according to some of the precepts of ecosophy (philosophic ecology) related to the interaction between ourselves and the ecosystem, through a rapprochement with natural rhythms, circadian and seasonal cycles, a care for the fundamental principles of our existence, of out role and presence on the planet, that is the survival through our adaptation to environment and not vice versa.
Òikos: Greek «house, residence, family»
There is a certain culture portraying the environmentalist and ecological feeling as expression of a fanaticism; it is sarcastically nicknamed “ecotism”, with obvious assonance to egotism. They are partially right: ecology and respect for the environment really are egotism forms, or interest for one’s own safety: eco, from Greek òikos, means house, and our house is that sphere of finite extent called Earth. The one who make a mess of his own house is artless to say the least.
More and more people already have a high consciousness of the damages inflicted to the environment, and in their soul they passionately wish for a society respecting nature, but it seems that is not enough, in effect we assist to an always more frequent and insidious destruction and contamination of every aspect of the environment surrounding us. It is obvious that decisions are not made by citizenry.
Technology advances at exponential pace, creating every day new side effects to which most of the people are not prepared or are not even aware: nano-particles, biotechnologies, etcetera.
For the sake of immediate earnings, no one cares for the effect on the environment in the long term, and by now not even in the short term; in the best case, the expedients to contrast the health issues need decades to be assimilated by mass communications, so they become obsolete before they could ever be effective. To defend oneself, it is necessary to be well-informed and to understand the changes, and above all to catch the principle.
The artists can humbly offer to society their avant-garde perspicacity rising from their natural sensitivity and from the necessary observation skill, which sometimes eccentric and multifaceted spirit may lead to a wider vision of reality.
For that sake I have called artists having different languages, renowned or emerging, but all joined by a previous and disinterested personal engagement on environmental thematics, and that through their artworks have expressed themselves favouring the public denunciation of this set of problems.
Willing to win the resilience due to apathy and carelessness that prevent the action finalised to problem solving, this exhibition wants to sensitise everybody, favouring them to become conscious of realities too often omitted, concealed or marginalised into an elsewhere, and affirming that to preserve the environment where we live it is necessary also the resolute dissent combined to the free adoption of attitudes by the side of single individuals, and above all a change in the ethic of those who contribute to move those very socioeconomic gears that set the lifestyles of community.
http://jizaino.net16.net/con-temporary/
http://jizaino.net16.net/
Comments 0
Say something