Hortus
350 x 170 x 170 cm, glazed terracotta, water, hydraulic pump, copper, iron, stainless steel, neon.
Baroque Chapel, Italian Cultural Institute in Prague , 2022
Photo: Elzbieta Bialkowska, OKNOstudio
Hortus has been selected within the project Cantica21 (section under 35). The work has been acquired by the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato and will be shown for the first time in the baroque chapel of the Italian Cultural Institute in Prague.
The sculpture is composed of an indoor glazed Impruneta’s terracotta fountain, included in a structure of seven rings in steel and neon (seven like Dante's skies). The design of the sculpture draws inspiration from the fountain that appears at the center of the Renaissance miniature "The Garden of Love or Hortus with Fountain of Youth" in the codex De Sphaera. It appears as an object similar to the antenna of a repeater, or a sort of alien obelisk inspired by a reflections on the longstanding myth of Paradise in a world with an exponentially growing human population in which nature is subject to plundering and space is less and less available.
Cantica21 is a public commissioning initiative launched jointly by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Ministry of Culture aimed at enhancing the value of contemporary Italian art by supporting the production of works by emerging or already established artists to be exhibited at various Italian Cultural Institutes, Embassies and Consulates across Europe. This widespread exhibition of diffused art has a special section dedicated to the 700th anniversary of the death of the poet and visionary Dante Alighieri who revolutionized, through poetry, the language and art of his time.
