Michele Guido taphrina deformans garden project_2021
September 28 > November 13, 2021
z2o Sara Zanin is pleased to present taphrina deformans garden project_2021, third solo exhibition by Michele Guido (Aradeo, 1975). Borrowing its title from the fungus ascomycete Taphrina deformans, able to attack the leaves of peach and vine making them bullous, the project articulates the spaces of the gallery through an ensemble of photographic and installation works that develop around three main elements of Michele Guido’s research: the architectural space intended as a built space, and for this reason subject to sedimented anthropological processes; the natural ecosystems and the possibilities of interchange between them and the built architectures, according to a geometrization of the space that crosses the history of man arriving to the present day; the garden to be understood as a place functional to a deep reflection on biodiversity and on the concept of climax related to the ecosystem balances.
For years interested in collecting and documenting, through an analytical study, many of the processes that manifest themselves within the natural world producing phenomena of change and transformation, Guido preserves his own personal archive: the repository thus becomes a tool of investigation on the world, on processes and what derives from it. By referring to the archive as a cognitive repository, the artist looks at the implicit potentialities of privileged access to knowledge tools.
How does man employ the investigative tools he possesses and what repercussions do these methods have on our existence? Privileging an empirical method of observation, Guido stages objective and demonstrable mechanisms.
If through phototropism - that is the phenomenon of orientation of organisms, or part of them, with respect to a light source - the leaves are subjected to a metamorphic process that changes the shape, moulding it by the impulse of light - similarly, photography generates impressions that can evoke the volumetric surfaces of what it captures. In this sense, phototropism and photography are in a close relationship: the vine leaf shaped by light assumes for the artist a volumetric and plastic consistency born in continuity with the imposition of light itself. As for the "impressions" of Medardo Rosso, the vine leaves photographed with macro-optics are transformed under the eyes of the viewer imprinting of a light that builds volumes and sizes.
A last corpus of works is represented by some wooden and glass cases inside which the ceramic oak galls - made with the potters of Albisola and Montelupo Fiorentino (FI) in collaboration with the Museum of Ceramics of Savona and the Museum of Ceramics of Montelupo - rise above floor plans of ancient architectures. Andricus Dentimitratus, Andricus Quercuscalicis, Andricus Quercustozae are some of the insects that generate a mechanism of transformation of plant tissue through their sting or spawning, which usually happens on oak trees. Within these works, biodegradable architecture and eternal architecture co-exist to underline the connection between two animal worlds - that of insects and that of men – separated only in appearance. Guido stimulates a reflection starting from this parallelism: the insect employs the plant kingdom to build a small autonomous ecosystem that, as soon as satisfied, returns part of the circularity of the biological cycle; man, in turn, exploits the available mineral resources, often arriving to an irreversible consumption.
MICHELE GUIDO | taphrina deformans garden project_2021 Duration: September 28 > November 13, 2021 Location: z2o Sara Zanin, via della Vetrina 21 Opening hours: Mon-Sat | 1-7 pm Info: info@z2ogalleria.it
