monitor art
NoonAugust 28, 2022 – 6:01 pm
Ignazio Cerio Museum, opening on Saturday 3rd September. Curated by Marina Guida
The great site-specific project by artist Franca Pisani entitled “Secret Gardens” opens on Saturday 3 September 2022 at 6.30 pm for the first time in Capri.
A corpus of one hundred works, mostly unpublished and created specifically for this exhibition, where the language of painting and sculpture draw inspiration from that of science.
Curated by Marina Guida and exhibited at the Museo del Centro Caprense Ignazio Cerio in Capri, which preserves fossils, marine invertebrates, prehistoric artifacts and archaeological finds from the island, the exhibition presents a particularly evocative setting that will move between art and science, investigate the importance and beauty of algae.
The canvases of various sizes will be placed in dialogue with the specimens of seaweed from the algological collection of Oronzo Gabriele Costa (1787-1867) acquired over a century and a half ago by Ignazio Cerio and exhibited for the first time in the rooms of the Museum.
The terrace of the Museum, located inside the fourteenth-century Palazzo Cerio, on the Piazzetta di Capri, overlooking the bell tower, will host a sculptural installation, formed by a forest of chestnut trees with inserts in onyx and precious marble.
Franca Pisani has selected and reproduced 300 species of algae from all over the world for this project, studying their properties and action. Among these we find:
• Linoporella capriotica, a fossil green alga dating back to the lower Cretaceous period (about 135 million years ago), found in Capri by the German geologist Paul Oppenheim (1863-1934) in 1889 in the Tragara area. The original material was lost but in 2005 the alga was found in the cave of Bue Marino di Caterola by Filippo Barattolo, professor of Paleontology at the Federico II University of Naples, and described together with Roberta Romano.
• The Pterocladia pinnata. Characteristic of this species is that of absorbing heavy metals, such as cadmium, copper, nickel, iron that come from industrial sewage, untreated domestic sewage, car exhausts.
• The Zostera marina, not an alga but a real aquatic plant, hosts clusters with edible grains among its leaves, has a high nutritional potential.
• The Marine Spirograph (Sabella spallanzanii) filters phytoplankton and zooplankton suspended in water, it looks like a beautiful flower, a vegetable and instead is an aquatic animal.
• The Monetina di Mare (Halimeda tuna). This species is capable of autonomously producing (photosynthesis) organic substances, it is nicknamed, marine prickly pear, because it resembles it in miniature. Due to its high mineral and protein content, it is also used for animal feed.
• Udotea desfontainii contributes to the production of sediments, which can facilitate the coral reefs in their growth, because it increases the nutrients of the sediments themselves.
• Red algae, or Rhodophyta (from the ancient Greek ῥόδον (rodon), “red”, and φυτόν (phyton), “plant”, are one of the oldest groups of eukaryotic algae which contains over 7000 species currently recognized. found in all regions of the world and grows attached to the bottom or other hard surfaces, grazed by herbivores such as fish, crustaceans, worms and gastropods, they are often found at greater depths than other algae.
Algae, as oxygen producers, are useful and beneficial for marine and terrestrial beings, are currently used in industry as valid substitutes for plastics, as well as being exceptional marine filters.
The curator Marina Guida writes: “Pisani intertwines pictorial art with the scientific world. In his works, made with natural fibers and pigments, clear chromatic contrasts and essential shapes alternate with rigor in a succession of “double meaning” images, where another meaning is hidden in each meaning. Imagined and imaginary. Dreamlike and environmental. The works created by the artist portray real landscapes, where instead of plants and roads we find algae immersed in a wonderful aquatic environment. The works offer themselves to our eyes as new and spectacular landscapes, hidden and unknown to man, yet real and complex ”.
«Algae – says Franca Pisani – are floating living beings, the beauty of a silent creation, the perfect imperfection of the universe. I think of the expanses of these species as great hills of the depths, but also secret gardens and ports and banks where the passage of Man has left a mark on Nature just as the mark has always scratched my art … algae, a mysterious presence, are the hope of life for the creatures of water, air and earth and will be so more and more in the future ». Once again, help for life on earth will come from the sea.
The project, promoted by the Centro Caprense Ignazio Cerio di Capri, and sponsored by the City of Capri, wants to remember the figure of Ignazio Cerio (1940-1921) a century after his death and his contribution to geological, paleontological and prehistoric studies on island of Capri.
The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Capri, and will be open until 8 October 2022 from Tuesday to Friday from 10 to 16 – Monday from 10 to 13 – Saturday from 11 to 16 – Sunday and holidays Closed.
28 August 2022 | 18:01
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