From 23 April to 6 January 2025, it will be possible to visit the exhibition NATURA/UTOPIA: art between ecology, reuse and the future, curated by Marco Tonelli, in the rooms of Palazzo Baldeschi, Perugia.
In this exhibition, art serves to make people reflect on issues related to ecology, the relationship between man and nature, sustainability, the reuse of materials, and the redesigning of the living space of human beings in relation to the natural environment. To do this, 13 artists have been chosen who are protagonists of the Italian and European cultural scene, from the United States and from non-European contexts, such as Cameroon and Mozambique, artists who have made the concept of utopia, reuse, design and nature their basic poetics since the 1960s, each with their own specific characteristics, as demonstrated by the works chosen for the exhibition itinerary, made with traditional but also unexpected and innovative materials.
We meet authors who are by now historicised such as Gianfranco Baruchello, who between the 1970s and 1980s with the creation of Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. worked the earth as if it were a work of art, Ugo la Pietra, who has always used architecture to reflect on the contradictions and relationships between nature and the city, and Piero Gilardi, who has made ecology one of the main themes of his work and with his nature carpets has transformed sections of nature itself into paintings. Giuseppe Penone is one of the most important Italian artists from the 1960s to the present who has always worked on and around nature and is represented in the exhibition by Struttura del tempo, where the bronze of the structure bears witness to the profound bond that exists between fusion and plant growth. Davide Benati and Nicola Toffolini also use traditional media for their studies, one preferring painting that sublimates the iconographies of nature and the other drawing with which he creates landscapes of utopian worlds where everything seems to take us back to a futuristic condition; Paolo Canevari has made the reuse of materials a distinctive feature of his work, as can be seen in the series on show, Black Pages, where antique gilded frames hold newspaper sheets covered in burnt motor oil as relics; Loris Cecchini investigates themes related to the environment understood as a space of (re)adaptation between human needs and new materials, creating sculptures with unusual materials where technical experimentation emerges in the realisation, while Giuliana Cunéaz creates highly involving environments through the use of digital and interactive works with video projections and screen paintings, 3D modelling and Artificial Intelligence.
The opening hours are as follows:
Tuesday to Friday: 15:00-19:30
Saturday and Sunday: 10:30-19:30
For more information:
website:  FondazionePerugia-NaturaUtopia