2018-10-17

Lesley Foxcroft - Grazia Varisco | Villa Pisani

Villa Pisani Bonetti, Bagnolo di Lonigo
21 June - 10 November 2018

Contemporary Art at Villa Pisani
Project coordinated by Luca Massimo Barbero

Lesley Foxcroft
Grazia Varisco

Exhibition curated by Francesca Pola
21 June - 10 November 2018
Villa Pisani Bonetti - Bagnolo di Lonigo (Vicenza)

The eighth edition of “Contemporary Art at the Villa Pisani” opens on Thursday, 21 June 2018. Every two years, the project invites contemporary artists to devise and create original works for the Villa Pisani Bonetti in Bagnolo di Lonigo in the Vicenza area, a youthful architectural masterpiece by Andrea Palladio.
This year the artists who have been invited to take on the morphological and expressive identity of this location are Lesley Foxcroft and Grazia Varisco, both of whom have chosen to intervene with their works both indoors and out.
The project was first launched in 2007 by Manuela Bedeschi and Carlo Bonetti, the owners of the Villa. The project is coordinated by Luca Massimo Barbero and curated by Francesca Pola, and put on by the Villa Pisani Contemporary Art Association in collaboration with A arte Invernizzi. The works created by the two artists are designed to interact with the place and with the spaces of this family home. This is a private, lived-in world that is not just an exhibition space, but also a place of active and creative memory. In its proactive relationship with its historical identity, it introduces unprecedented forms of experience for the visitor.

The exhibition created by Lesley Foxcroft (1949, Sheffield) for the spaces of the Villa Pisani includes a work in the central hall of the building. Here she intends to highlight the four side doors with a linear horizontal sculpture placed on the lintel of each one. They will be proportionate to the size of the doors, thus accentuating the architectural structure of the Palladian building and its main internal transit routes. For the park around the Villa, Foxcroft has also designed a sculpture in galvanised metal, which she says she chose because of its habitual use in external urban design, due to its functional simplicity. The sculpture consists of a number of basic L-shaped modules arranged to form a sort of rhomboid that is open and traversable, integrating the urban material in the natural setting. The artist says she wishes to “contain the space without imposing upon it”. She thus calls attention to the dialogue between the environment and an open, non-invasive form of artistic intervention, which is also a feature of Palladio’s architecture. Lastly, in one of the basement areas, Foxcroft presents a selection of works consisting of different elements, made from 1997, the year she first showed her work in Italy. The sculptures are made of simple, everyday materials such as cardboard and medium-density fibreboard (MDF - industrially assembled wood fibre), and industrial rubber, which are all extremely ductile and elastic. The elementary nature of the materials, which are stripped of any metaphorical or symbolic value, is coupled with the elementary nature of the construction, which is facilitated by their malleability. In a sort of intentional anonymisation of their own identity, these forms are placed on the walls and floor. It is the superimposition and variation of the positions of these elements, which are differently but regularly aligned, that marks out the space, though without occupying it with their plasticity, while conferring a possible progression upon it. Essentiality, discipline, and rationality are all aspects of an active relationship with the Palladian spaces of the Villa Pisani, which is crossed and traversed by these presences. They do not occupy it rhetorically as monuments but, in a clean, agile manner, they point to potential trajectories and routes.

For this occasion, Grazia Varisco (1937, Milan) has focused on the relationship between the Palladian building and its surrounding area, coming up with two works that relate the Villa and the park. The first is a sort of reflecting surface placed so as to cover the two sloping blocks at the side of the flight of steps at the back, which connects the Villa Pisani to the large back lawn and to the surrounding environment. It reflects the sky and rests like a second skin on the structure, without modifying its shapes and volumes, but simply amplifying the significance of the transition between inside and out. The work connects the different spaces and times of the visitor’s passing, and also spreads out onto the adjacent lawn, with other, smaller reflective sheets, conceptually leading it as far as the cellar. The mechanisms of this transition can also be seen in the second work - a large sculpture designed for the park. It consists of two vertical sheets in weathering steel. They are placed together but not aligned, creating a sort of open-air corridor that gradually narrows until it culminates in a reflective Risonanza [Resonance] in the background. Impossible to go through, it intentionally creates the effect of a room that narrows, but out of doors and with no ceiling.
At the centre of the large hall of the Villa is a large installation consisting of three intersecting elements, in three different colours (black, white, and grey), which is part of the Gnomoni [Gnomon] series. Conceptually and explicitly, this is a sort of theoretical and experiential sundial, in which the surprising fold of the geometrical structure makes the shadow give material form to the passing of time. In one of the basement areas of the cellars, Varisco recalls the presence of other Gnomoni, but with a more extended and gradual permeation of the space. At the end of the display we find her Quadri comunicanti [Communicating Paintings], which once again offer a different take on the theme of emptiness and of the reflecting surface. In this case, it is disturbed by intentional interferences, as an element of interpretation and modification of space.
Factors such as time and light, which have featured in Varisco’s work since the late 1950s, find a new variant in the display created for the Villa Pisani: as in Palladio’s building, what makes the difference and constitutes the uniqueness of the artistic experience in Varisco’s work is always a human presence and conduct, coupled with the relationship adopted by geometric and luminous coordinates. This occurs not in a purely abstract dimension but in a real dialogue with the environment, in the real-life experience and dimension of time.

The exhibition welcomes the visitor as one would a guest in a home and the park around it: both inside and outside Andrea Palladio’s building, Foxcroft’s and Varisco’s works become an integral part of the place, as do the works created in previous years by the dialogue entered into with these spaces by fourteen other international artists. These include Nelio Sonego and Michel Verjux (2007), Igino Legnaghi and François Morellet (2008), Alan Charlton and Riccardo De Marchi (2009), David Tremlett and Bruno Querci (2010), Arthur Duff and Niele Toroni (2012), Nicola Carrino and Arcangelo Sassolino (2014), and Pino Pinelli and Mauro Staccioli (2016). Some of the works on display still form part of the Villa and its park, designed for and harmoniously inserted into the complex, making the Villa Pisani an active, living place of history in its encounter with the contemporary world.
Two bilingual monographic catalogues of Foxcroft’s and Varisco’s works contain introductions by Manuela Bedeschi and Carlo Bonetti, critical essays by Luca Massimo Barbero and Francesca Pola, bio-bibliographical notes on the artists and illustrations of the works installed at the Villa Pisani.

Villa Pisani in Bagnolo di Lonigo was designed by Andrea Palladio from 1541, upon his return from his first trip to Rome. It was built in 1544 and 1545 and is possibly the most representative work of the early part of his career, marking the beginning of his collaboration with the Republic of Venice. Inspired by the monumentality of Imperial Rome, Villa Pisani asserted the power of Venice on the mainland. The Villa was designed for official receptions but also as a home, and it controlled the surrounding farmland, while its position on the river connected it to the Serenissima for the transport of people and goods. The main façade faces the river, while the rear looks towards the working areas of the complex.

The Barchessa, which is located in the garden, was originally a rustic building with large arched roofs mainly for agricultural purposes. After careful restoration and a complete renovation, it has once again come back to life, preserved and improved for the twenty-first century. It is now an elegant Relais, with large spaces for events and the Osteria del Guà restaurant (www.labarchessadivillapisani.it).

INFORMATION
OPENING: Thursday 21 June 2018 at 7 p.m.
LOCATION: Villa Pisani Bonetti, Via Risaie 1, 36045 Bagnolo di Lonigo (Vicenza)
EXHIBITION PERIOD: 21 June - 10 November 2018
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: www.villapisani.net - tel. 0444 831104 fax 0444 835517 - villa@villapisanibonetti.it
OPENING HOURS: from Monday to Friday 10-12 a.m., 3-5 p.m., Saturday 10-12 a.m., the first Sunday of each month 10-12 a.m., every day by appointment
ORGANIZATION: Associazione Culturale Villa Pisani Contemporary Art, in collaboration with A arte Invernizzi, Milan
PUBLICATION: two bilingual monographic catalogues edited by Associazione Culturale Villa Pisani Contemporary Art
PRESS OFFICE: Angela Faravelli press-art@virgilio.it - tel. 02 29402855