The world in a small way opens at the Craveri Museum in Bra on Saturday 14 October 2023 at 5pm: the herbaria and contemporary repertoires of the Turin artist Andrea Guerzoni, including collages, photographs, natural samples and drawings, in dialogue with the permanent collections of the museum. On the occasion of the inauguration, which will be attended by the artist, entry to the museum is free. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with A Pick Gallery of Turin and can be visited until November 19th.
The Small World documents Andrea Guerzoni's connection with the natural world and with the stories of exemplary and unconventional personalities of the past, in particular naturalists and great travellers, such as Kumagusu Minakata, Clarence Bicknell, Philipp Franz von Siebold and Federico Craveri. The aspect that most fascinates the artist about these figures, who lived between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is their being out of the ordinary, self-taught, versatile and irregular and the fact that they became famous for something that was independent of their personal training or activity. prevailing specification.
Flowers, plants and ferns, mosses, lichens and minerals, mushrooms and insects encountered on excursions in the mountains and in the woods, during visits to city parks and botanical gardens and gardens, in the domestic green space and in the many frequented paper gardens, become suggestions for imaginative scenarios and food for thought. In Guerzoni's drawings, photographs and collages, as well as in his Erbari di lui, where he includes the natural find in addition to these techniques, we find the artist's attentive and curious gaze, aimed at the particular and the microcosm.
The small cards of the Repertorio series, fragments without a predefined position, resemble the tiles of a mosaic and the windows that open onto endless searches on the Internet. The artist uses the standard 10x15 cm format to create a composition in which each voice can continuously dialogue with everything else. The single image, often combined with another with a play of reference or chance, is at the same time an element of a sequence and part of a global design. These cartographies invite the observer to find connections where there seems to be none, or to create their own, and to participate in the creation of a multifaceted and creative picture of reality. The "small world theory" maintains, in fact, that all complex networks existing in nature have in common the fact that, given any two nodes, they can be connected through a path made up of a relatively limited number of links. The small world effect investigates the overall characteristics of connected networks, regardless of the specific characteristics of the elements.
Andrea Guerzoni (Turin, 1969) graduated in Painting at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts, lives and works in Turin. Guerzoni places the memory, conservation and evocation of fragments of life at the center of his research: from the smallest and apparently marginal forms, such as lichens and insects, to the biographies of great authors, secluded and at the same time revealing, such as the artist Carol Rama or the naturalist Minakata Kumagusu. Andrea Guerzoni, who has always been fascinated by eccentric and irregular personalities and by the ambiguous, surprising and mysterious aspects of nature, practices frequenting as an intimate sharing. His recent works describe alternative and parallel biological forms and the development of organic elements taken from the vegetal, animal and mineral world: they refer both to an internal world and to a universal humus.
Among the main exhibitions: Artoteca Di-Se, Collegio Mellerio Rosmini, Domodossola (2021), Herbarium vagans, traveling exhibition in Domodossola, Orta San Giulio, (VB) and Naters, Canton Valais - Switzerland (2021/2020); In the garden. Dialogue with Clarence Bicknell, Forte dell'Annunziata - MAR Museo Civico Archeologico Girolamo Rossi, Ventimiglia (IM) (2018, pers.), Naturality exercises, Castello della Lucertola, Apricale (IM) (2018, pers.); Naturality exercises , Galleria Opere Scelte, Turin (2017, pers.); Asylum, EXMA Exhibiting and Moving Arts, Cagliari (2017); Here, Cavallerizza Reale, Turin (2016); PanoRama, Selected Works Gallery (2015); Kinderstube - The child's room, Studio Tommaseo, Trieste (2015, pers.); AccaAtelier, Atelier Giorgi, Turin (2014); RAQAM 4+1, drawing and sign, SetUp Art Fair, Bologna and Rossmut, Rome (2013); A room all for Carol, Artissima 19, Institutions section – Artegiovane, Turin (2012, pers.); Domestic Drama, Sala Comunale d’Arte, Piazza Unità d’Italia, Trieste (2012, pers.), Domesticheria, TAC Temporary Art Café, Turin (2012, pers.); How much light in black, Palazzetto Art Gallery, Rome (2011, bipers. with Carol Rama).
Opening hours: Thursday from 3pm to 6pm; Sundays and holidays from 10am to 12.30pm and from 2.30pm to 5.30pm. By reservation only (0172.412010 craveri@comune.bra.cn.it): from Tuesday to Friday from 8.30 to 12.30.
