«The wilderness is in this narrative both a wild place and a chaotic dimension, harking back to the crowd, to the frenzy of today’s society,» is how curators Riccardo Vailati and Giulia Mariachiara Galiano introduce the exhibition now on view at the Traffic Gallery in Bergamo. The title, Istituire un rifugio nella selva (Establishing a Shelter in the Wilderness), places in dialogue two terms that may be yes at the antipodes, but also equally complementary. Shelter and wilderness, on the one hand the reference to the domestic dimension, to a place of peace, on the other hand there is chaos and the unknown. The common denominator, however, is the wild, animalistic and primordial dimension, which constitutes both elements under its sphere. Starting from this reflection, the group exhibition is built, which finds its visual and theoretical expression in the works of four young artists, Anna Marzuttini, Nera Branca, Stefano Ferrari and Gabriele Longega, as well as a long performance by Matteo Bianchini during the opening day.

Nostalgia for the primordial

Although the works in the exhibition are able to immediately transport the visitor to a sphere seemingly far removed from what he or she is accustomed to, it is equally evident that the speeches speak to a side of us that is stifled and repressed today. In front of works such as Nera Branca‘s Guardians of the Threshold or Gabriele Longega‘s Tomorrow I will be born and I will be someone else in another place, it is inevitable that a nostalgic feeling emerges in us, with a bittersweet flavor. It is our primal instincts that are challenged. The bones that Nera Branca recovers in his expanded refuge, that is, the woods of the Aosta Valley, as well as Longega’s esoteric language, rekindle a collective memory in the individual, going to act on a contemporary gap that is not a little forgotten.

Again, it is the works of Stefano Ferrari and Anna Marzuttini that complete the evocation, observing the floral and faunal universe with a precision lens. On the one hand, there is Ferrari, who establishes his refuge for others, or rather, gives life to sculptures that can be real places of shelter for insects, replacing – in the ideal relationship of empathy between man and animal – the human presence with an artificial construct, but one that here is emptied of its egoic component to become conscious of a need. On the other hand, Anna Marzuttini «fixes in the work the intimate encounter with the organic landscape,» as the curators explain. In her paintings, drawings and sculptures, they restore the forms, vibrations and textures in which the artist immersed herself, searching for a primordial sensibility of which we are nostalgic today.

Awakening from collective amnesia

Here, then, Establishing a Shelter in the Wilderness becomes a necessary path in a contemporary and urban context that tends to suffer from a chronic syndrome of collective amnesia, not only from a theoretical but a bodily point of view. All the artifices, facilities and simplifications that nihilize our behaviors and thoughts contribute to reinforcing a new body within which the primordial sphere no longer finds space. The wilderness that the artists in the exhibition embrace – think of Nera Branca’s bic drawings that in embracing chaos turn into a salvific refuge – becomes a mirror of the frenzy within which we are submerged without realizing that beneath the layers of indifference there is more than us.

Ph credits Erik Falchetti
Courtesy the artists and Traffic Gallery