The exhibition has the intention to bring together three singular painters to show by different cultural approaches, the Dutch Evi Vingerling, the Chinese Chen Li and the Italian Daniele Fabiani, the relationship between art and nature and how vernacular traditions, social and cultural situations change the perception of nature in art and vice versa. Different artistic practices and new artistic inspirations bring the audience in a journey into an ancient context, as the one of Villa Vallero, through fresh artworks.

The notion of nature has always been bound to the human history: from the first dualism “savage” and “domestic” during the nomadic culture, crossing over the “Ager et Silva” of the Roman Empire up to the modern age, where this differentiation remains object of study.

The dichotomy Nature-Culture have been recently analysed by the French anthropologist Philippe Descola in his book Beyond Nature and Culture (The University of Chicago Press, 2013). According to him, the separation between nature and culture has no longer any reason to exist, neither as a fact nor as a conceptual model. Nature is the result of a socially authoritative word and of a concomitant series of actions (religious, political, economical) that treat it as a resource to be exploited until it is destroyed.

A new debate on art and nature will take place to show how the social perception has changed the experience of their borders in last ages. It will be interesting to see how contemporary art is renewing itself, its technique and assessment, dematerialises itself or, on the contrary, becomes more tangible to enter in a more historical and social dimension.

This exhibition will explore the nature environment through the unique colour mark and palette of the single artist involved and, moreover, through the contemplative approach to the natural element that surrounds them.

Actually, although the Vingerling’s paintings, in acrylic and tempera, show motifs and shapes that are enclosed in the visible reality that surrounds us, they possess the ability to connect to the visible through our emotions. This potent interaction between art and nature is captured by the artist who distils it in images through her memory. She distorts the idea of reality by the use of abstract colours. Her brushstrokes intensify this abstract vision from which paintings come up that transcend from real and raise questions about the emotional perception of nature.

The visual transformation and the transfiguration of our world allow the artist to transpose in her paintings something that has the power to surprise us emotionally.

Valeria Ceregini