Piero Gilardi in Turin: the exhibition "From art to life" at the PAV
The exhibition is the second stage of the monographic cycle that the PAV dedicates to its founder, after "Car Crash. Piero Gilardi and Arte Povera". If the first exhibition dealt with the beginnings and the relationship with Arte Povera, this new exhibition instead follows the path developed from the seventies until the twenty-first century, when Gilardi progressively shifted the center of his work from the artistic object to participation, public space and communities.
From opera to public space
Starting in the seventies, Gilardi progressively abandoned the idea of the work as a good destined for the market to devote himself to forms of direct intervention in society. The itinerary reconstructs the experiences started in 1974 in Turin's centers and counseling centers, where drawing and sculpture become tools for dialogue, integration and relationship. Among the projects recounted there is also the meeting atelier in the Aurora district and the experience of the neighborhood carnival, which culminated in 1980 in a large collective parade. Art thus enters daily life and the streets, transforming itself into a shared process rather than an object to be contemplated.
Masks, marches and participation
Another nucleus of the exhibition is dedicated to Gilardi's relationship with the La Comune Collective and with Turin's political and social movements. Drawings, sculptures, masks and costumes are made for demonstrations and parades, from the workers' mobilizations of Fiat and Teksid to the May Day celebrations, up to the parades of the 2000s. Satire, performance and plastic language become tools to make civil and social issues visible, showing a continuity of research that spans several decades.
An idea of art that anticipates the present
The exhibition highlights how some of Piero Gilardi's intuitions anticipated practices that are central to contemporary art today: participation, relationship with communities, ecology and use of public space. The role of the artist changes: no longer just the author of a work, but also a facilitator of collective processes.
This vision finds its landing place in the PAV - Parco Arte Vivente, founded by Gilardi in Turin in 2008 as an experimental center dedicated to the relationship between art, nature and society.
On the occasion of the exhibition, the outdoor path also hosts "Louise", an installation by the French artist Marie Denis, in dialogue with the plant matter and the landscape of the park.
The exhibition offers the opportunity to learn about a lesser-known part of Gilardi's career, showing how his research has progressively shifted the center of art from the object to people, from the gallery to the street and from individual production to collective participation.
