SUSTAINABLE THOUGHT
Haugesund International Festival of Artistic Relief Printing in Norway. Haugesund Museum of Fine Art.
“Sustainable Thought” is an art project about the impact which art might not have on earth[1]. From the scientific and political debates on climate change to our daily life, thoughts and choices of people could make the difference, they could be sustainable. We are not so used to think about sustainability in the field of art, where the results of a project justify the means or an exciting idea totally absorbs the mind of an artist. “Sustainable Thought” aims to represent a symbolic attitude and ethical mental approach for the interaction between human being and nature, between concept meaning / aesthetic form of artwork and human being habitat.
I was born and I actually live in Brescia, a city of 200.000 inhabitants close to the mountains. Here and in other cities, I met many people from the older generations talking sadly about the fast natural evolution of Alps (restriction of the glaciers and lack of snow are the most recurring examples). I thought about it and, as a consequence, I thought about my way to live, use and respect the mountain landscapes. In a wider sense, I tried to put in place an art project from A to Z that is sustainable, trying to compose a thin but consistent equilibrium between creation and contemplation, creative interaction and respect.
During the summer of 2018 I did trekking in Val Seriana, one of the two main valleys of Bergamo Province (north of Italy). From the municipality of Valgoglio starts a beautiful path called “Il sentiero dei laghi” (The path of the lakes) that reaches several artificial lakes at approximately 2.000 meters of altitude. Once at the lakes, I have been tremendously attracted by the stones that characterise the landscape. I thought: “I want them for an art project but what would happen if everyone was attracted by the beauty of the rocks and took them away? Theoretically, the precious landscape would be damaged and its natural and cultural value lost”. It is a severe hypothesis but potentially real. So, for this reason, I decided to develop an alternative process: “next time”, I said to myself, “I will come here and I will pick up stones to engrave and use for prints. Once I finish, I will put them back on the same spot”. And that is what I did.
On the 10th of December, I picked up the stones and, on the 24th of the same month, I released them in the same place. Within this period of time, I engraved 4 stones in my studio to get 4 prints on recycled paper (made in Santiago de Cali, Colombia). On purpose, I decided for partial intervention: so the natural characteristics of rocks meet geometric, synthetic and abstract tracks. All the passages have been documented in collaboration with Gianluca Checchi (photographer) and Semino Bevilacqua (illustrator and graphic designer).
[1] Is not the goal of the project affirming a unique and pure way to be respectful in front of a common human heritage and environment. Is not the intention of the artwork judging somebody or something else, it is only a starting point, a toolkit that helps to recalibrate our position and the weight of our decisions.