Robert Gschwantner, Austrian artist (Steyr, 1968), has dedicated his artistic activity to investigating these “lost landscapes” through research and travel to the sites themselves. From this work, cycles of artworks have emerged that form a narrative — in sculptural, video, or installation forms — of what remains of these catastrophic and often forgotten events.
Gschwantner at Casa Testori, his fourth exhibition in a museum institution in Italy, presents works created after five explorations of five locations across our continent that bear the scars of this violence inflicted upon the environment: Las Médulas in Spain; the island of Gyali and Corinth in Greece; Afsluitdijk in the Netherlands; and Magdeburg in Germany. All are “lost landscapes” as they have been radically transformed by pollution or by violent interventions driven by economic or political reasons.
During his field missions, the artist collects materials that he later inserts into transparent PVC tubes used to create his tapestries or paintings. The works become like contemporary reliquaries incorporating real fragments — testimony to wounds inflicted on the natural environment. Robert Gschwantner’s work is completed with documentary research through which the artworks are connected with maps, photographs, and videos.
Gschwantner’s work is a stark and well-documented reflection on an idea of development that too often results in irreversible environmental damage. At the same time, the artist seeks to compensate, through highly poetic actions, those landscapes violated by humankind: his works function like displays or ostensions through which recovered materials are transformed before our eyes. The debris of disasters appears in situations of unexpected beauty.
An important aspect of Gschwantner’s work is his close dialogue with Antonio Latella, one of Italy’s leading theatre directors and his travel companion in a shared poetic reflection on these dramatic issues affecting everyone’s lives. The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of a dialogue between Gschwantner and Latella, edited by Gilberto Santini. This dialogue deepens the themes of the exhibition and guides visitors through the exhibition path.
The artist explains:
“The idea for this exhibition was born from Testori’s artistic versatility, active both in visual art and theatre — fields in which we respectively work. In searching for a collaboration between us, we started from the projects in which Antonio Latella was able to accompany me. It is always wonderful when he has the time and can travel with me. This happened five times among the twelve projects I have realized over the years. These are the five projects presented in the exhibition. They are very representative of my journey, in which my research was shared with him. During one of these trips, Antonio also began writing his first novel. The journey became a source of inspiration for both of us.”
Opening:
Saturday, April 18, from 5:00 PM
