a great unprecedented installation, including over 400 floral elements in regenerated plastic, can be visited in the industrial spaces of Tollegno 1900.
From 3rd June to 23rd July 2021
Tollegno 1900, Sala Luce
Via Antonio Gramsci, 11 – Tollegno (Biella)
Twenty years after the participation in the Venice Biennale directed by Harald Szeemann, when the collective participated with 1200 golden plastic tortoises coming out of the sea and that occupied the entire Garden area to symbolise the warning sign of nature threatened by man, Cracking Art realizes for the first time in its history a work that does not depict animals but originates from the plant world. The title of this large installation is Nature we didn’t know yet, and it will be open in the industrial spaces of the textile company Tollegno 1900, as a close dialogue between architecture and the territory, from 3rd June to 23rd July 2021.
The work Nature we didn’t know yet is configured as a site-specific installation composed of over 400 white floral elements in regenerated plastic that extends into the large room – 50 metres long and 20 metres wide – flooded with light in which a central element measuring two and a half metres of height and one and a half metres in diameter stand flooded with light. Each flower that makes up the installation is a unique piece, with its own aesthetic and significant potential. The material is not placed inside moulds but is shaped by hand, transforming a ‘repetitive’ material par excellence, plastic, into a mouldable element, always different, never the same.
The lack of seriality, a topos in the production of Cracking Art, is conceived here as the sign of a new nature created by man reborn into a different form, who reappropriates luxuriant and vital specificities and spaces, abandoning the homogeneity in which man tries to force it. The term “nature” in the common conception is associated with something primordial, powerful, boundless, but at the same time evokes darker scenarios related to exploitation, submission, control.
Nature we didn’t know yet evokes the need for reconciliation between the human being and what he himself creates, imagines, thinks, produces. A locus amoenus within which the visitor is invited to identify becoming part of the installation, reflecting on the indomitable tendency of nature, even if modified, to reorganise and tend to the creation of life.
The place chosen for this first exit aims to reinforce the concepts expressed by the work: an industrial room but with architecture that evokes places of worship, with the predominance of light entering from the two long sides through a series of large windows from which, looking outside, on the one hand you can see the mountains, the green of the woods, the water that flows while on the other hand the gaze is projected on the areas of the factory still used for the production of fine wool.
The cornerstone of Cracking Art’s work has always been the recovery and transformation of plastic material with the aim of investigating the relationship between nature and technology, uniqueness and serial reproduction, individuality, and stereotype, questioning the current and future condition of the human being with respect to the concept of sustainability. Using plastic, regeneratable or regenerated material, Cracking Art creates works and installations that imagine the possible conditions of the future.
The partnership between Cracking Art and Tollegno 1900 was born in the sign of the sharing of values linked to the strong social and environmental commitment, which distinguish both realities, also united by the common origin of Biella and passion for art. Within the industrial context of Tollegno 1900, which sees the company engaged in an eco-sustainable approach applied to all production processes, the hybridisation of the languages of art and business lays the foundations of a new cultural project that aims to bring the public closer to environmental issues through new interpretative keys arising from art.
The meeting between Cracking Art and Tollegno 1900 coincides with the birth of a new cultural hub in Biella that, in the coming months, will increasingly animate the manufacturing company’s production spaces. The project consists in the activation of new collaborations and initiatives aimed at promoting the value of sustainability through art and innovation.
