Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website Into the Wild at Merano Arte: Gina Folly, Linda Jasmin Mayer, Alek O., Stefano Pedrini, Luca Trevisani
february 01, 2018 - Merano Arte

Into the Wild at Merano Arte: Gina Folly, Linda Jasmin Mayer, Alek O., Stefano Pedrini, Luca Trevisani


With the exhibition Into the Wild, Kunst Meran continues its examination of nature and landscape in artistic positions that it began in 2017 with solo shows by Helen Mirra (USA) and Gianni Pettena (I). 

This group exhibition concerns itself with the ideas and concepts of nature that shape us today: with industrialisation and its accompanying urbanisation and rationalisation of work, the human being has become increasingly cut off from nature. So it is not surprising that great interest in cultivated parks, greenhouses and zoos developed particularly in the 19th Century. 

Various facilities bear witness to these endeavours especially in #merano, its rise as a health resort tellingly also beginning in the 19th Century. Like the famous botanical promenade, that was named after the spa doctor Franz Tappeiner (*1816 - 1902) who initiated and realised the project. Tappeiner also devoted himself to botany and during his lifetime put together a herbarium of over 6000 plant species, including from his immediate surroundings. 

In the post-digital present nature is more familiar to us in screensavers than in the real environment. Nature is reborn as a place of longing. Retreating into nature becomes an alternative to our complex, technology-driven present. Alongside excerpts from Franz Tappeiner’s herbarium, which today is to be found in the Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck, the exhibition gathers four contemporary positions together that engage in different ways with 

the perception and conception of nature and the dichotomy of artificiality and nature today. 

Gina Folly (*1983 in Zurich) addresses almost absurd relationships produced by contemporary efforts to live a life in a harmony of body, spirit and environmental awareness. Nature thus appears to us as a lifestyle-product. Artificiality and art are among the observations to be made in the age of power yoga and bioactive nutrients. 

In her works #aleko (*1981 in Buenos Aires), begins with already existing objects and materials that she transforms into artworks. For example in the location-specific installation 

‘L’impero delle luci’ (2017), in which she works with collected and dried leaves. 

For his ephemeral sculptures and installations #lucatrevisani (*1979 in Verona) takes forms and material from the world of plants and animals – and reflects poetically/formally on their origin and their contemporary meaning. In his film ‘Sudan’ he portrays the last remaining male white rhino that lives in a rhino sanctuary in Kenya watched over by paramilitary units, but which is too old to reproduce. White rhinos are above all hunted for their horn, which is said to be an aphrodisiac. 

Stefano Pedrini’s (*1980 in Sondrio) paintings are dense accumulations of signs – graphical representations of elements symbolising nature. He for example fills the canvas almost mechanically with palms or leaves that are defined only by a few brush strokes, and thus creates a dense ornamental structure. 

The Merano-based artist #lindajasminmayer (*1986) vividly shows in her video installation ‘Parallel World’ how an expedition in the wilderness, in this case the Antarctic, also means an expedition into the self and how nature and landscape mirror one’s own mental state. 


Into the Wild borrows its title from the 2007 American feature film of the same name by Sean Penn, which tells the (true) story of a student from a well-off family, who journeyed alone in the Alaskan wilderness in order to face the challenges of leading a simple life far from civilisation.

 

Into the Wild 

Gina Folly, #lindajasminmayer, #aleko, #stefanopedrini, Luca Trevisani 

 

Opening Friday, 9th February 2018, 7 pm 

10th February – 8th April 2018 

Kunst Meran im Haus der Sparkasse Lauben 163, 39012 Merano 

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