Beyond Landscape
Landscape is alive.
Landscape speaks, sounds and draws the spaces it consists of.
It is made of earth, air, water, lights and shadows,
of gestures, actions, occurrences and intentions,
of voids and solids.
Landscape is not inside our mind, it is in our hands and in our eyes.
In line with a well-established path of investigation focusing on landscape as a ‘topos’, the exhibition Beyond Landscape aims to present and keep track of the practice of seven young artists – both Italian and international – whose artistic research deals with the same issue.
The term “landscape” has always referred to a given fraction of the natural environment which, by convention, is clearly delimited and characterised by peculiar aesthetic and formal attributes. However, in the light of new critical approaches and debates, it could be argued instead that landscape is a mere mental construction which men have been imposing upon themselves over time.
On this basis, the Beyond Landscape project seeks to emphasise the complexity of defining exactly the boundaries of landscape, due to their constant evolution and their close relationship with the dynamics of the social, cultural and economic sphere.
This project thus represents a chance to put forward further, more nuanced perspectives capable of shifting the focus away from the mere aesthetic or contemplative experience of landscape, which has been typical of this genre from the very beginning.
Accordingly, landscape is considered here not just as an artistic typology but also as a tool of analysis, enriched with new values and in dialogue with the present time.
Crossing the limits as a way to create new landscapes is the concept Gerardo Mosquera illustrated in the catalogue for the exhibition Lost in landscape (Mart Museum, April 5 – August 31, 2014). Mosquera highlights how, depending on the approach adopted, “landscapes are able to change the way they communicate with us: they may be more ‘social’, ‘subjective’, ‘cultural’, ‘mystical’, ‘aestethic’, and so on. Our subjectivity, experience, culture, ideology and social circumstances all influence the way we perceive, process and interpret landscapes”.
Beyond Landscape presents a select group of works which, in different ways, deconstruct the preconceived idea of landscape. The aesthetic experience offered to the viewer deviates from the habitual ways of presentation and representation. It rather follows formal solutions which hardly refer to what we are used to recognising and identifying as ‘landscape’: new narratives are suggested here in which there is no unity between vision and representation. The different mediums employed – sculpture, installation, photography, drawing and painting – together bring about an aesthetic outcome where, significantly, the object and the subject diverge from each other altogether. This last crucial point summarises the primary purpose of the show: namely, to talk about landscape without landscape. Because landscape lives somewhere else, it lies beyond any convention and is reshaped every instant by the passing of time as well as by the events which accumulate within our globalised world. A world now free from those spatial-temporal limits and mental barriers which formerly prevented thought from following hyperlinks and deflagrating in all possible directions.
Special thanks to Boccanera Gallery, Alberto Peola arte contemporanea, Franco Soffiantino Contemporary Art Productions, The Gallery Apart.
Landscape is alive.
Landscape speaks, sounds and draws the spaces it consists of.
It is made of earth, air, water, lights and shadows,
of gestures, actions, occurrences and intentions,
of voids and solids.
Landscape is not inside our mind, it is in our hands and in our eyes.
In line with a well-established path of investigation focusing on landscape as a ‘topos’, the exhibition Beyond Landscape aims to present and keep track of the practice of seven young artists – both Italian and international – whose artistic research deals with the same issue.
The term “landscape” has always referred to a given fraction of the natural environment which, by convention, is clearly delimited and characterised by peculiar aesthetic and formal attributes. However, in the light of new critical approaches and debates, it could be argued instead that landscape is a mere mental construction which men have been imposing upon themselves over time.
On this basis, the Beyond Landscape project seeks to emphasise the complexity of defining exactly the boundaries of landscape, due to their constant evolution and their close relationship with the dynamics of the social, cultural and economic sphere.
This project thus represents a chance to put forward further, more nuanced perspectives capable of shifting the focus away from the mere aesthetic or contemplative experience of landscape, which has been typical of this genre from the very beginning.
Accordingly, landscape is considered here not just as an artistic typology but also as a tool of analysis, enriched with new values and in dialogue with the present time.
Crossing the limits as a way to create new landscapes is the concept Gerardo Mosquera illustrated in the catalogue for the exhibition Lost in landscape (Mart Museum, April 5 – August 31, 2014). Mosquera highlights how, depending on the approach adopted, “landscapes are able to change the way they communicate with us: they may be more ‘social’, ‘subjective’, ‘cultural’, ‘mystical’, ‘aestethic’, and so on. Our subjectivity, experience, culture, ideology and social circumstances all influence the way we perceive, process and interpret landscapes”.
Beyond Landscape presents a select group of works which, in different ways, deconstruct the preconceived idea of landscape. The aesthetic experience offered to the viewer deviates from the habitual ways of presentation and representation. It rather follows formal solutions which hardly refer to what we are used to recognising and identifying as ‘landscape’: new narratives are suggested here in which there is no unity between vision and representation. The different mediums employed – sculpture, installation, photography, drawing and painting – together bring about an aesthetic outcome where, significantly, the object and the subject diverge from each other altogether. This last crucial point summarises the primary purpose of the show: namely, to talk about landscape without landscape. Because landscape lives somewhere else, it lies beyond any convention and is reshaped every instant by the passing of time as well as by the events which accumulate within our globalised world. A world now free from those spatial-temporal limits and mental barriers which formerly prevented thought from following hyperlinks and deflagrating in all possible directions.
Special thanks to Boccanera Gallery, Alberto Peola arte contemporanea, Franco Soffiantino Contemporary Art Productions, The Gallery Apart.
Giorgia Severi, Albedo, 2016Telo geotessile bianco, 5×2,5×1,5 m
Giorgia Severi, Ghiacciaio Presena, 2016Graphite and pigment on paper mounted on dibond, 300×100 cm
Marco Strappato, Untitled (Ground), 2015Concrete, Portoro marble, 10cm Ø, iPad (video-loop), variable dimensions
Marco Strappato, Untitled (35-5), 2013Photo print, magazine page, plastic film, spray paint, diptych, 40×60 cm each
Adéla Waldhauserová, Landscape as the object of photography, 2015Mixed media, environmental installation
Adéla Waldhauserová, Landscape as the object of photography, 2015Mixed media, environmental installation
Cosimo Veneziano, Il pallido contorno del sole, 2013-2014Ink drawings on acetate and cotton paper, 50×60 cm each, iron bases, 140x120x40 cm each
Sophie Ko, Fiori dal male, 2016Glass, flowers collected on the landslide, butterfly wing pollen, clamps, stones, 210x100x7 cm
Laura Pugno, Textures, 2016Mixed media, environmental installation (dettaglio)
Adéla Waldhauserová works with photography, not only with the immediate capturing of an image, but she also works with photographs as a physical material – as objects. She is interested in landscape and human environments. She recycles her own as well as found photographs and books, and by creating small changes she destroys the narrative style of reading the images and puts new meaning to them, for example social themes, such as the most current one concerning migration.
She studied Visual Communication at Ecole d’Art Maryse Eloy.
Adéla Waldhauserová works with photography, not only with the immediate capturing of an image, but she also works with photographs as a physical material – as objects. She is interested in landscape and human environments. She recycles her own as well as found photographs and books, and by creating small changes she destroys the narrative style of reading the images and puts new meaning to them, for example social themes, such as the most current one concerning migration.
She studied Visual Communication at Ecole d’Art Maryse Eloy.
Giorgia Severi is a multimedia italian artist, working on environmental and landscape issues. Her work is based on archiving disappearing landscapes, which includes natural landscapes as well as cultural practices related to the landscape itself. Subjects of her research are melting glaciers, deforestation, global warming, climate change, environmental contaminations, invasive species and endangered species, which she investigates through scientific data, as well as traditional and cultural meanings related to the place and its history. Giorgia Severi works with sculptures, installations, drawings and paintings, video and sound field recordings, working into the environment where the important part of the projects happens. Works on paper and canvases are often on big sizes to include and to involve the viewer into a different perceptional concept of the space-landscape, in a not contemplative way.
Giorgia Severi born in 1984 in Ravenna, where she studied restoration of mosaic and graduated at the Accademy of fine arts. She lives and works in Italy and around the world. Last few years her work has been showed in: Galleria La Salita Madeira; Muse Museum, Trento; Galleria Studio La Città, Verona; 56° Venice Biennial; Museo Nazionale della Montagna Cai, Turin; Museo Diocesano, Faenza; Artefiera; Artverona; Galleria Marcolini; m.contemporary gallery, Sydney; IIC, Sydney; Gasc Museo Arte Sacra, Milan; Casa Testori, Milan; Camaldoly Monastery; Bagnacavallo Cappuccine Museum; Monogao21 + Magazzeno Art Gallery Ravenna.
Giorgia Severi is a multimedia italian artist, working on environmental and landscape issues. Her work is based on archiving disappearing landscapes, which includes natural landscapes as well as cultural practices related to the landscape itself. Subjects of her research are melting glaciers, deforestation, global warming, climate change, environmental contaminations, invasive species and endangered species, which she investigates through scientific data, as well as traditional and cultural meanings related to the place and its history. Giorgia Severi works with sculptures, installations, drawings and paintings, video and sound field recordings, working into the environment where the important part of the projects happens. Works on paper and canvases are often on big sizes to include and to involve the viewer into a different perceptional concept of the space-landscape, in a not contemplative way.
Giorgia Severi born in 1984 in Ravenna, where she studied restoration of mosaic and graduated at the Accademy of fine arts. She lives and works in Italy and around the world. Last few years her work has been showed in: Galleria La Salita Madeira; Muse Museum, Trento; Galleria Studio La Città, Verona; 56° Venice Biennial; Museo Nazionale della Montagna Cai, Turin; Museo Diocesano, Faenza; Artefiera; Artverona; Galleria Marcolini; m.contemporary gallery, Sydney; IIC, Sydney; Gasc Museo Arte Sacra, Milan; Casa Testori, Milan; Camaldoly Monastery; Bagnacavallo Cappuccine Museum; Monogao21 + Magazzeno Art Gallery Ravenna.
Laura Pugno (Trivero, 1975) lives and works in Turin.
Her artistic research has as its main terrain of investigation the landscape, understood not so much as a natural element, as a reproduction of a more or less extensive portion of reality, but as a social construction, as a metaphor through which to invite the viewer to better observe the context, the details.
Selected shows: Deposito d’Arte Italiana Presente (ARTISSIMA, Torino, 2017); Palinsesti (Sharevolution, Genova, 2017); FORT / DA (Casa Masaccio Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea, San Giovanni Valdarno, Arezzo, 2017); Ci vediamo in centro at ALL’APERTO (Foundation Zegna, Trivero, Biella, 2017); Passare il segno (Pinacoteca Albertina, Torino, 2017); L’instabilità degli oggetti (ex atelier Corradi, Bologna, 2017); Sala d’aspetto, Stefano Arienti – Laura Pugno (Studio medico in centro, Milano, 2016); Horizon (Magasin, Grenoble, 2016); Galleria in versi / Paesaggio con figura (Erica Ravenna Fiorentini gallery, Roma, 2016); L’interpretazione dei sogni (MEF Museo Ettore Fico, Torino, 2016); Beyond Landscape (Renata Fabbri gallery, Milano, 2016) ; Spiaggia Radetzky (Progetto Città Ideale, Milano, 2016); Profili del mondo (Biennale del disegno, Museo della città, 2016); Dissonanze (Museo del Territorio Biellese, Biella, 2015); Passi Erratici (Foundation Nuto Revelli, Paraloup, 2015).
Laura Pugno (Trivero, 1975) lives and works in Turin.
Her artistic research has as its main terrain of investigation the landscape, understood not so much as a natural element, as a reproduction of a more or less extensive portion of reality, but as a social construction, as a metaphor through which to invite the viewer to better observe the context, the details.
Selected shows: Deposito d’Arte Italiana Presente (ARTISSIMA, Torino, 2017); Palinsesti (Sharevolution, Genova, 2017); FORT / DA (Casa Masaccio Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea, San Giovanni Valdarno, Arezzo, 2017); Ci vediamo in centro at ALL’APERTO (Foundation Zegna, Trivero, Biella, 2017); Passare il segno (Pinacoteca Albertina, Torino, 2017); L’instabilità degli oggetti (ex atelier Corradi, Bologna, 2017); Sala d’aspetto, Stefano Arienti – Laura Pugno (Studio medico in centro, Milano, 2016); Horizon (Magasin, Grenoble, 2016); Galleria in versi / Paesaggio con figura (Erica Ravenna Fiorentini gallery, Roma, 2016); L’interpretazione dei sogni (MEF Museo Ettore Fico, Torino, 2016); Beyond Landscape (Renata Fabbri gallery, Milano, 2016) ; Spiaggia Radetzky (Progetto Città Ideale, Milano, 2016); Profili del mondo (Biennale del disegno, Museo della città, 2016); Dissonanze (Museo del Territorio Biellese, Biella, 2015); Passi Erratici (Foundation Nuto Revelli, Paraloup, 2015).
Marco Strappato (Porto San Giorgio, 1982) is an Italian artist based in Milan. He holds an MA from the Royal College of Art London, a BFA from Brera Academy Milan and a BFA from the Fine Arts Academy of Florence. His work is engaged with a urgent reassessment of the contemporary understanding of image production and image distribution, through a multidisciplinary practice which involves collage, video, photography and installation. Mostly Strappato uses landscape images e.g. desktop wallpaper (strictly connected with the idea of desire and escapism). Those images may be used to understand the aesthetic experience in contemporaneity, amid the rhetorical discourses about the authentic and inauthentic, the exotic and familiar, the artificial and the natural.
Marco Strappato has exhibited in many institutional spaces, including at 16a Quadriennale Rome, MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna Bologna, MAXXI . Museo Nazionale del XXI secolo Rome, American Academy in Rome, Royal College of Art London, Victoria Art Center Bucharest, Palazzo della Permanente Milan, Centro Pecci Prato, Macro Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Rome, Prague Biennale 5, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche Urbino, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea “Osvaldo Licini” Ascoli Piceno, Fondazione del Monte Bologna.
Marco Strappato (Porto San Giorgio, 1982) is an Italian artist based in Milan. He holds an MA from the Royal College of Art London, a BFA from Brera Academy Milan and a BFA from the Fine Arts Academy of Florence. His work is engaged with a urgent reassessment of the contemporary understanding of image production and image distribution, through a multidisciplinary practice which involves collage, video, photography and installation. Mostly Strappato uses landscape images e.g. desktop wallpaper (strictly connected with the idea of desire and escapism). Those images may be used to understand the aesthetic experience in contemporaneity, amid the rhetorical discourses about the authentic and inauthentic, the exotic and familiar, the artificial and the natural.
Marco Strappato has exhibited in many institutional spaces, including at 16a Quadriennale Rome, MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna Bologna, MAXXI . Museo Nazionale del XXI secolo Rome, American Academy in Rome, Royal College of Art London, Victoria Art Center Bucharest, Palazzo della Permanente Milan, Centro Pecci Prato, Macro Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Rome, Prague Biennale 5, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche Urbino, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea “Osvaldo Licini” Ascoli Piceno, Fondazione del Monte Bologna.
Sophie Ko (Tbilisi, 1981) lives and works in Milan. At the core of her artistic practice lies the concept of time, which is explored in its intense symbolic interaction with the materials she employs – mostly ashes of burnt images and pure pigments – and the images created. The change and instability of materials in relation to the flow of time are some of the constants of her artistic research. The Temporal Geographies, for example, provide an exemplification of a series of works eternally suspended between the act of creation and that of destruction, where the image is constantly subjected to a continuous process of modification through the slow and relentless collapse of the material of which it is made. Conceived through a conceptual and formal negotiation between sculpture and painting, these works stage “a bond made of weight, pressure, gravity, and the destruction of time on images, but also of formation, depth, return, and rebirth with respect to the passage of time.” Meaningful metaphors of the caducity and mutability of existence, her works recall the trajectory of life that we trace, parallel to a slow but persistent collapsing movement.
Recent solo shows include: Renata Fabbri, Milan (2015, 2018 and 2023); Contemporary Locus, Bergamo (2023); Postmasters Rome, with Marta Kucsora (2023); Museo Marino Marini, Florence (2022); EAST Galerie, Strasbourg (2022); Galleria de’ Foscherari, Bologna (2016 and 2021–22); BUILDINGBOX, Milan (2021); BUILDING Gallery, Milan (2020); Ca’Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice (2019); The OpenBox, Milan (2018). She has participated in group exhibitions at Palazzo Ducale di Gubbio (2022); Fondazione Malvina Menegaz, Castelbasso (2021); Albergo delle Povere, Palermo (promoted by RISO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Sicily, Palermo) (2021); Palazzo Barbò Torre Pallavicina, Bologna (2021); MAC – Contemporary Art Museum, Lissone (2021); and Renata Fabbri, Milan (2020), among others. In 2016, Sophie Ko won the Lissone Prize for Painting organized by MAC – Contemporary Art Museum, Lissone.
Sophie Ko (Tbilisi, 1981) lives and works in Milan. At the core of her artistic practice lies the concept of time, which is explored in its intense symbolic interaction with the materials she employs – mostly ashes of burnt images and pure pigments – and the images created. The change and instability of materials in relation to the flow of time are some of the constants of her artistic research. The Temporal Geographies, for example, provide an exemplification of a series of works eternally suspended between the act of creation and that of destruction, where the image is constantly subjected to a continuous process of modification through the slow and relentless collapse of the material of which it is made. Conceived through a conceptual and formal negotiation between sculpture and painting, these works stage “a bond made of weight, pressure, gravity, and the destruction of time on images, but also of formation, depth, return, and rebirth with respect to the passage of time.” Meaningful metaphors of the caducity and mutability of existence, her works recall the trajectory of life that we trace, parallel to a slow but persistent collapsing movement.
Recent solo shows include: Renata Fabbri, Milan (2015, 2018 and 2023); Contemporary Locus, Bergamo (2023); Postmasters Rome, with Marta Kucsora (2023); Museo Marino Marini, Florence (2022); EAST Galerie, Strasbourg (2022); Galleria de’ Foscherari, Bologna (2016 and 2021–22); BUILDINGBOX, Milan (2021); BUILDING Gallery, Milan (2020); Ca’Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice (2019); The OpenBox, Milan (2018). She has participated in group exhibitions at Palazzo Ducale di Gubbio (2022); Fondazione Malvina Menegaz, Castelbasso (2021); Albergo delle Povere, Palermo (promoted by RISO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Sicily, Palermo) (2021); Palazzo Barbò Torre Pallavicina, Bologna (2021); MAC – Contemporary Art Museum, Lissone (2021); and Renata Fabbri, Milan (2020), among others. In 2016, Sophie Ko won the Lissone Prize for Painting organized by MAC – Contemporary Art Museum, Lissone.
Petra Lindholm (Karis, Finland, 1973) lives and works outside Älmhult in Småland, Sweden. She studied at The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, Sweden (1996–2001) and has exhibited at galleries and museums in Sweden, Finland, Germany, Italy and USA. She is represented in the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden, Borås Konstmuseum, Sweden, Västerås Konstmuseum, Sweden, EMMA, Esbo, Finland, ProArtibus, Finland and Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland. In 2001 she received the Maria Bonnier Dahlins scholarship, in 2006 she was awarded third prize at Carnegie Art Award and in 2018 she received Axel Theodor Sandsberg’s prize from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. During the last years she has finished a number of public commissions where she works with site specific installations and sculpture.
Petra Lindholm (Karis, Finland, 1973) lives and works outside Älmhult in Småland, Sweden. She studied at The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, Sweden (1996–2001) and has exhibited at galleries and museums in Sweden, Finland, Germany, Italy and USA. She is represented in the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden, Borås Konstmuseum, Sweden, Västerås Konstmuseum, Sweden, EMMA, Esbo, Finland, ProArtibus, Finland and Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland. In 2001 she received the Maria Bonnier Dahlins scholarship, in 2006 she was awarded third prize at Carnegie Art Award and in 2018 she received Axel Theodor Sandsberg’s prize from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. During the last years she has finished a number of public commissions where she works with site specific installations and sculpture.
Cosimo Veneziano (Moncalieri, 1983) lives and works in Turin where he co-founded the residency “Internazionale Progetto Diogene”, born in 2007. His artistic practice is characterized by a wide activity of research and workshop connected at the reading of the archives and it focused on the development of sculture and drawings.
Selected solo exhibitions: Rompi la finestra e ruba i frammenti!, AlbumArte, Roma, 2018; Petrolio, MEF – Museo Ettore Fico, Torino, 2016; Verso occidente l’impero dirige il suo corso, Galleria Alberto Peola, Torino, 2014; Monochrome, Villa Straüli, Winterthur, 2015; Los contrabandistas copiaron una escultura de mucho valor, Lugar a Dudas, Cali (Colombia), 2013; Cattedrale, Careof DOCVA, Milano, 2013; L’epoca delle passioni tristi, Tirana Institute for Contemporary Art, Tirana, 2011.
Cosimo Veneziano (Moncalieri, 1983) lives and works in Turin where he co-founded the residency “Internazionale Progetto Diogene”, born in 2007. His artistic practice is characterized by a wide activity of research and workshop connected at the reading of the archives and it focused on the development of sculture and drawings.
Selected solo exhibitions: Rompi la finestra e ruba i frammenti!, AlbumArte, Roma, 2018; Petrolio, MEF – Museo Ettore Fico, Torino, 2016; Verso occidente l’impero dirige il suo corso, Galleria Alberto Peola, Torino, 2014; Monochrome, Villa Straüli, Winterthur, 2015; Los contrabandistas copiaron una escultura de mucho valor, Lugar a Dudas, Cali (Colombia), 2013; Cattedrale, Careof DOCVA, Milano, 2013; L’epoca delle passioni tristi, Tirana Institute for Contemporary Art, Tirana, 2011.
- Sophie Ko
- Sophie Ko
Contemporary Locus 15, Bergamo
Sept 16 – Nov 5 , 2023
Opening Sept 16, 5 pm
Curated by Paola Tognon
- Sophie Ko
Sept – Oct 24, 2022
Museo Marino Marini, Florence
Curated by Marcella Cangioli and Antonella Nicola
- Sophie Ko,
- Serena Vestrucci,
- Lulù Nuti
Feb 3-5, 2023
Main Section
Pav. 25 – Booth B27
- Sophie Ko,
- Matthieu Haberard,
- Lulù Nuti
Nov 4-6, 2022
Main Section
Hall Red – Booth 11
