Environmental Alterations
Posted on August 28 2021
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Author Silvia Colombo
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Environmental Alterations │ 25 August - 22 September 2021
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As the title suggests, “Environmental Alterations” is a group exhibition showing video, photographic as well as digital works about the environment - and its variations. Arranged as a monothematic itinerary through still and moving images, the show is a sort of climax going from incontaminated natural scenes to more urbanised contexts. In between, along this path, one meets compromises but also more evident contrasts, synergies together with conflicts, problems and possible solutions. Questions and answers.
In nature, changes are caused either by humans, by animal interactions or by natural adverse events such as earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis. Every single one of them is capable of altering the previous ecosystem both in a micro and in a macro perspective. At Spazio Millepiani, where the show is set, one can see it all. At once.
One can witness barely discernible changes, where and when nature and humans are kind and delicate - they act slowly and evolve even slower. So, in the end, they do alter the environment, but in a way that it is almost unperceivable. A reflecting chair on the sea, for instance, reminds us of a movie scene, romantically arranged in order to duplicate, replicate and mirror the immediate surroundings. It tastes like a film by Michel Gondry, where everything seems possible and yet so distant. It invokes Romanticism and the Sublime by evoking deep feelings and an endless chain of thoughts.
In nature, changes are caused either by humans, by animal interactions or by natural adverse events such as earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis. Every single one of them is capable of altering the previous ecosystem both in a micro and in a macro perspective. At Spazio Millepiani, where the show is set, one can see it all. At once.
One can witness barely discernible changes, where and when nature and humans are kind and delicate - they act slowly and evolve even slower. So, in the end, they do alter the environment, but in a way that it is almost unperceivable. A reflecting chair on the sea, for instance, reminds us of a movie scene, romantically arranged in order to duplicate, replicate and mirror the immediate surroundings. It tastes like a film by Michel Gondry, where everything seems possible and yet so distant. It invokes Romanticism and the Sublime by evoking deep feelings and an endless chain of thoughts.
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Ingrid Weyland, Topographies of Fragility VIII, 2020
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This symbiotic relationship between humans and nature can be also seen when dealing with the sacred and its rituals aiming to modify a certain space just to identify its importance by pointing out and delimiting its borders.
Instead, a faster and definitely more invasive pace is traceable every time an urban context is portrayed. Year after year, the cities we experience everyday show us how much we have been contributing to changing the pre-existing landscape. The unavoidable consequences are huge amounts of territories shaped by humans according to their minds and desires. Or, better, by OUR ideas and impulses. We have been acting like ants building neverending anthills and won’t stop within the foreseeable future.
Then, another kind of environmental alteration is the one aroused by art itself. Once creativity hits our ordinary milieu, the result will be certainly visible by anyone - if only because they share their visual results on multiple public occasions. Here, art itself contributes to a spatial transformation that occurs afterwards. The artists, within this process, have an active role in modifying - when not subverting - the order of things after something or someone has already happened.
If we, humans, own and manage the power to change something here and now, art has also the power of time -that has altered, alters and will continue to alter our environments.
Instead, a faster and definitely more invasive pace is traceable every time an urban context is portrayed. Year after year, the cities we experience everyday show us how much we have been contributing to changing the pre-existing landscape. The unavoidable consequences are huge amounts of territories shaped by humans according to their minds and desires. Or, better, by OUR ideas and impulses. We have been acting like ants building neverending anthills and won’t stop within the foreseeable future.
Then, another kind of environmental alteration is the one aroused by art itself. Once creativity hits our ordinary milieu, the result will be certainly visible by anyone - if only because they share their visual results on multiple public occasions. Here, art itself contributes to a spatial transformation that occurs afterwards. The artists, within this process, have an active role in modifying - when not subverting - the order of things after something or someone has already happened.
If we, humans, own and manage the power to change something here and now, art has also the power of time -that has altered, alters and will continue to alter our environments.
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Daniel Kariko, Storm Naquin, In God’s Country, Pointe Aux Chenes Road, Louisiana, 2019
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'Wonnarua' by Ryan Andrew Lee from Boomalli on Vimeo.
Ryan Andrew Lee, Wonnarua, 2020
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Elham Angell, Isolation Protection, 2021
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Matteo Capone, 2A Landfill, 2020
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Marko Milić, Skeletal Leaves, 2021
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Kirsten Hoving, Working Stone #2, 2020 / Working Stone #1, 2020
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Jim Ferguson, Wide Range 49, 2019 / Wide Range 10, 2019
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ENVIRONMENTAL ALTERATIONS
25 August - 22 September 2021
Millepiani - Via N. Odero,13, Rome - IT
linfo@millepiani.eu
+39 06.888.17.620
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