OFLUXO

C.F. Contemporary Fire is glad to announce the first event that also sets off the very start of the project: “Poggio Tempesta’’ is a group show curated by Caterina Fondelli and featuring the artists Oliviero Fiorenzi, Nicola Ghirardelli, IPER-collettivo and Francesco Pacelli. The opening reception takes place Saturday June 11, 2022 from 4.30 to 9 pm in Via Francesca sud, 115, Poggio Tempesti, Florence. With the patronage of the Municipality of Cerreto Guidi, the show will be on view until July 24, 2022.

The exhibition itinerary is conceived as a walk in the large park surrounding a domestic context, a place that will become a new cultural hub for contemporary art in the area during Summer 2022, hosting also a residency program.

“Poggio Tempesta”, declination and extension for the name of the green and characteristic hill where the house is located, is ready to transport visitors into an unusual atmosphere, if compared to the spaces in which they usually contemplate artworks. Wandering through the vast garden, step by step, they will bump into unknown and enigmatic entities, characters on a magical journey of discovery towards a momentary escape. With a strong reference to the elements, key concept of the whole Contemporary Fire project, the exhibition proposes the return to a kind of locus amoenus, a small cosmos, an happy island and idyllic landscape made up of foliage, flowers and fruit, as a way to reconnect with an ancestral part of the self and the world.

Each one of the artists involved, interprets from a personal perspective the environment deputed to welcome their works, focusing on a peculiar detail united together with suggestions and sensations experienced while having an inspection of the place and meeting the family, heart, uniqueness and strong point of this project.

Oliviero Fiorenzi is inspired and investigates a specific aspect, or rather a small “resident”, of the community living the space dedicated to the exhibition daily. Bewitched by myths related to the socalled multiple lives of cats, the artist presents a lesser known part of his production, the one connected to the technique of ceramics. In the liminal space, dear to him, amidst public art, personal mythologies, a playful side and the use of colour, Fiorenzi combines a found object with some characteristic artworks, creating an installation that will arouse the  mystique of folklore. For the occasion, Nicola Ghirardelli explores the millenary sculptural practices of fusion, reinterpreting their functional elements, with unprecedented aesthetic developments. The artist investigates possibilities and results of metals, constantly seeking a balance between decoration and evocation. His sculptures appear as motifs or tools that have always been present in the place, blending with the natural environment and enriching it with a precious added value. The objects, a compound of usual elements, are pigeonholed into shapes or diagrams that filter their reception. With their installation, IPER collettivo invites us not to be intimidated: the work must actually be experienced and is to be observed from a radically contemporary point of view.

The platform immersed in the grass, introduced by a natural path, will reveal its modular “puzzle” aesthetic, composed of spinning supports made from recycled plastic, in bright colour ranges. Their assembly is designed for the formation of a drawing, a pattern, with explicit references to pixel art. Furthermore, with a nostalgic look at Superstudio’s utopias, the collective of artists laudably respond to the sustainable goals and the respect and enhancement of the context conveyed in the exhibition, presenting an artwork with potentially infinite expressive capacities.
Finally, Francesco Pacelli presents some mysterious plasticity through combinations and mixtures of different materials, shades of colours and shapes, in which to detect tensions between the anthropomorphic, the organic and the supernatural. His is a decidedly seductive expression of the uncanny, which spreads complicity and a desire to approach in the viewer, as if to let these creatures tell their story, their birth, their destiny. Implying sophisticated textures and various directions of propagation in space, his sculptures enthrall in a crescendo of curiosity, up to the use of light in a particular spot of the garden, which will give changing scenarios with the passing of the hours.