“Nothing is real” by Chris Gilmore in Pietrasanta, Lucca

In Pietrasanta, Lucca,  home of  bronze foundries  and marble workshops,  where art is able to conjugate its connotations of eternity and challenge to time, an unusual exhibition “Nothing is real” by Chris Gilmore,  from March the 9th up April the 10th 2012.

The location is the Galleria Arte Contemporanea  Marco Rossi  in Piazza Duomo 22.

The  sculptor, born in  Manchester in the 70s, has been  living in Udine in the North of Italy for some years. As from his curriculum,  he exhibited  in Italy  in 2001 at the Archaeological Museum in Bergamo, in Padua at  the Galleria Perugia and in 2005 in Milan at the Bells Foundation. He also is appreciated in the States for his past exhibitions at the Museum of Art and Design and  at Freight + Volume Gallery. The material he uses in the works on show here in Pietrasanta  is  rather unusual,  recycled cardboard turned into an unsuspectedly expressive material.  The sculptor abandons the  quasi- noble materials,  marble and bronze to devote himself  to a  perishable  stuff. Everyday objects such as the moka(Italian coffee maker), the typewriter or more defined  contemporary cultural symbols such as the Lambretta (a biker of the fifties) or the Fiat 500 become embodiments of his playful imagination.

The cardboard, extremely poor material, generally  used in packaging,  accomplished expression of consumer  lifestyle,  is here being ennobled  by  artistic inspiration.  Art is trying  to overcome the decaying feature of the material it works on,  simultaneously  hinting at the ephemeral and transient features of contemporary times. Nothing is destined to last. Gilmore’ artistic coordinates may be found in the Arte Povera of the sixties for the refusal of  the traditional means of expression in favour of non- artistic materials, such as  natural wood, stone, rag, industrial waste.

According to Germano Celant, its main theorist, the Arte Povera  aims at  reducing signs  to their lowest terms to bring forth  their archetypal values.  Therefore,  Arte Povera not as  an impoverished art,  but an unrestrained one,  a working lab in which the theoretical basis turns  in a complete availability towards materials and processes, beyond any apparent negation and deflation stance.

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