Borgo Museo | Nuove Opere 2019 – 2021
* La Residenza d’Artista 2021 (seconda edizione) è un progetto a cura di CCT-SeeCity per la Pro Loco di Castagno, realizzato con il contributo della Fondazione Caript nell’ambito del bando Per la cultura #iorestoattivo 2021 e patrocinato dal Comune di Pistoia. Clicca qui per vedere foto e video.
Biography
Construction engineer and architect, Davide Tagliabue has chosen art as an expressive language and tool for dealing with landscape. Born in Monza in 1988, he currently lives and works between Matera and Venice. From the north to the south of Italy, he has collected various experiences over the years that combine his art with the theme of the environment. In 2020 he participates in the CALL for Artists and is selected by the Scientific Committee of the Borgo Museo for the Artist’s Residence 2021 (second edition). Thus his career as an artist also reaches Castagno di Piteccio.
Philosophy
After graduating in building engineering-architecture, Tagliabue decides to cultivate his strong passion for art, in particular for what he himself defines the art of making. A lover of self-construction, he embarks on his own path in the design and architecture of the ephemeral: “we must learn to accept transience” is a thought that he often shares in his works and words. This path leads him to relate more and more to nature and open spaces, coinciding with the practice of Land Art, and gradually moving away (without ever abandoning it) from the architectural approach to approach the artistic one. He loves to experiment and see things grow. The engineering studies have left him a practical and pragmatic approach but he always leaves room for chance or better for the magic of things that happen by themselves anyway. He loves to experiment with materials, but his first and greatest passion remains wood. Before creating a work, he works with the same interest in its design using graphics and various techniques of representation: creating the sketches of a work of art is an equally stimulating phase. At the base of Davide Tagliabue’s work there is always careful reflection, a thought that he manages to transfer in his “constructions” in a decidedly clear and communicative way.
Artwork in Castagno
Among the trees at the Chestnut Station, on the right going down the road towards the town, in the middle of the greenery and other chestnut trees, the tree-work of art by Davide Tagliabue has found space and in a certain sense new life. SUTURA (this is the title, SUTURE in English) is man’s mistaken attempt to give answers to current problems; a relationship with nature never thought of as symbiotic and beneficial, but almost exclusively focused on the immediate and on limiting or slowing down the effects that our parasitic action is having on what surrounds us. A cure that is not intended as a remedy and inversion of trend and which is often destined to become itself a future problem. This approach is told through a declared attempt to mend a chestnut trunk in a state of deterioration, whose plasticization of the stitched parts tells of the desperate attempt to slow down the inevitable. A plasticization that if hit by light seems to embellish with its presence, but whose concretions and aesthetic imperfections that characterise it at a closer look, suggest a role more of disease than of cure. The work is a prime example of what the artist defines as a “forensic sculpture”, as the pieces that compose it are the result of an on-site investigation aimed at reconstructing the dynamics that led to the death of the tree in order to find the exact missing pieces, in a collaboration with the natural that sees the role of “finished work” being delegated not to an aesthetic-compositional choice, but to the discovery of what time and nature have decided to allow to be rediscovered.
The work was built by stitching together pieces of a chestnut trunk found in a state of deterioration in the woods with plastic elements: the artist, in addition to these, collected plastic bottles among the inhabitants, plastic then melted with a hot air gun to shape it to cover some segments of the tree stitched up with bands. Fundamental to both the movement and the installation of the “reconstructed” tree at the Castagno station was the help of some inhabitants in particular: Riccardo, Stefano and Marco.
Davide Tagliabue, before arriving in Castagno for the Artist’s Residence 2021, had already intended to work with wood and plastic, reconstructing a tree with pieces with an “artificial” aesthetic, but the inspiration came when he found it among the woods picked up a piece that clearly belonged to the log he was working on. This prompted him to return to the site to look for other missing pieces and to reinforce the concept he wanted to express. “If it is true that we are “artificialising” nature to our liking, – the artist explains – it is also true that, in trying to “cure” our mistakes, we never create anything new and we do not bring anything beneficial; we just try to slow down our action. Obviously what we are doing so far to remedy our mistakes is no more than a small mending of a tear.” This reflection of his prompted him not to add anything other than what he found and collected in the woods, because otherwise he would have told a wrong, false story, although he would have liked to see the tree rebuilt more, perhaps with some branches. To explain the meaning of his work Sutura in one sentence, he said: “Cure is not necessarily a remedy; not necessarily a remedy is a cure”.
Just arrived to Castagno, Davide immediately went into the “wildest” paths around to discover the depth of the forest until he found what he didn’t know he was looking for. The forest (and the village, together with its inhabitants) wait for his return for future art adventures… Meanwhile his artwork Sutura is already inspiring a civic education project about environment, plastics and pollution, promoted by teacher Valentina Ciani together with a class of the Raffaello Comprehensive Institute in Pistoia. The project will be published on Castagno website (www.castagnodipiteccio.it) and social media (@castagnopit #BorgoMuseo).