Un raccolto di consolazione

Works by Francesco Fossati and Carlo Steiner
With three drawings by Giovanni Testori
Curated by Elisa Del Prete

Casa Testori
10 April/18 May 2024

On the occasion of Art Week 2024, Casa Testori presented Un Raccolto di Consolazione, an exhibition project that brings together the research of two artists, Francesco Fossati and Carlo Steiner, who have in common the use of fungal material. On one hand, Francesco Fossati’s sculptures are obtained from a substrate that is used for the cultivation of mushrooms; on the other hand, Carlo Steiner’s pictorial works adopt spores as a chromatic element. Curated by Elisa Del Prete, the exhibition is completed with the exposure of three unpublished drawings from the series Funghi that Giovanni Testori realized in 1978. 

In Fossati’s sculptures, the blocks of substrates stimulated for the development of mushrooms and mycelium are then dehydrated so as to stop their proliferation. In Steiner’s paintings, on the other hand, fungal spores removed from their free propagation and deposited on glass plates or sheets of paper are used as pigments and are governed through the use of stencils. Both artists turn their look to the creative action of nature and then implement a gesture of control of it.

The title of the exhibition Un raccolto di consolazione suggests a reference to the adventure of Italo Calvino’s Marcovaldo who discovers mushrooms in the flowerbed near the tram stop in a completely urban context in which, from the initial surprise that the action of nature awakes, the competition for possession can only then break out. Similarly, artists draw directly from the generative force of nature, but without any idyllic attitude towards it, they are now completely far from a surprised gaze that has instead been replaced by the obsession of a technique that can guarantee its control. Artifice and nature then become unequal in a competition in which the action of harvesting is not an end in itself but aimed at putting one’s own work into practice.

«I was interested in a title that was dramatic from one side but also slightly comical», underlined the curator. «The exhibition is the dialogue between two artistic practices which, starting from a curious look at the fungal environment and ecosystem, actually open up to reflections that lead elsewhere, to the sign/drawing and to the form as compositional elements, creating a certain degree of ambiguity in regard to a close relationship with naturally uncontrollable processes which here become a pretext to instead talk about the affirmation of artistic action, beyond any romantic intent».

The exhibition project was completed with a public program:

On May 4^th there was a meeting dedicated to John Cage, the great American musician who had drawn key indications for his compositional work from his knowledge and passion for the world of mushrooms. Cage’s experience will be presented by Piergiovanni Domenighini, organist of the Musical Chapel of the Papal Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi and doctorate student at the CIRIAF institute in Perugia.

On May 18^th a meeting have took place with Riccardo Blumer, architect and designer, full professor at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture, who presented La forma è necessaria, the research work on the architectural organization of biological structures such as mushrooms and molds, done inside the design laboratory with the students of the Accademia. 

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The exhibition project was supported by Fondazione Fiera Milano