Piero Giraldi
Pascal Beausse receives Piero Gilardi, Italian artist.
On the occasion of Piero Gilardi‘s solo exhibition at the Sémiose Gallery in Paris, this new session of « In situ & Invivo – conversations on Art » in his company will be an exceptional opportunity to return on the artist’s career since the 60’s and to consider his current research on the Linving.
November 2008, Piero Gilardi inaugurates the Parco Arte Vivente in Torino. This experimental art center takes the shape of a garden located in the neighbourhood of Lingotto, at midtown’s border, in the heart of a concentrated network of railways, re-able factories, offices and apartment buildings. Piero Gilardi gathered different ideas from his work, already undertaken during the 60’s. His Tapis Nature (Nature Rugs) made him one of the major figures of the international artistic scene. As a pioneer, Piero Gilardi offers an expirement to his audience allowing to regain a link with nature thanks to a living art, recreating little pieces of a natural world in polychrome polyurethane in a realistic way.
Original member of the Arte Povera movement, Gilardi chose at the turn of the 70’s, other experiences that he designated as « relationals »: Art therapy experiences suggesting an individual or collective catharsis to the public. A collective creativity experienced in an Indian reserve, in a Kenyan tribe, in a barrio in Managua. Experiences in political and social activism in Torino, where he designs sculptural clothes for the demonstrators. Then explaining with the new medias, in order to explore other ways of joining art to life, the complexity of life with the language of art and the tools of new technologies.
His parc of Living Art is a synthesis of all these experiences. Through numerous collaborations and invitations – with Dominique Gonzalez – Foerster, François Curlet or Michel Blazy for example – he discovers his conception of Bio-Art, thinking of man’s place inside the living. The parc is at the same time a place of exhibition, creation and workshops, where ecology is understandable through propositions and reflections of the current greatest artists, scientifics and theoricians.
BIOGRAPHIES
Piero Gilardi
Born in 1942, Piero Gilardi lives and works in Torino. He is an essential figure of the international artistic scene. He first exhibited in France in 1967 in the Parisian gallery Ileana Sonnabend, a few times at the Consortium in Dijon during the 90’s and at Lyon’s biennial in 2003. He also published Not for Sale, a collection of his writings at the Presses du Réel in 2002.
Exhibition at the Semiose Gallery from the 9th of October until the 5th of December 2009, 3 rue des Montibœufs, 75020 Paris. www.semiose.com
Pascal Beausse
Pascal Beausse is an art critic. He teaches History of Art at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and at the Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design in Geneva. Independent curator, he has recently presented Void Has No Exit at the Creative Union Hiroshima, The Clearing at Prague’s triennial, and Leo Fabrizio – Dreamworld at la Salle de bains.
