Peola Simondi Gallery is pleased to present SYMBIOSIS. The Interconnected Threads of Fungi, the first edition of Post Scriptum. Curated by the gallery in collaboration with Laura Pugno, the exhibition focuses on the world of fungi and the connections they create on our planet. The artists invited to participate alongside Laura Pugno (Trivero, 1975) are Takashi Homma (Tokyo, 1962), Claudia Losi (Piacenza, 1971), Flaminia Veronesi (Milan, 1986).
The exhibition will be open free to the public on Saturday, October 7, 2023 on the occasion of the Giornata del Contemporaneo promoted by AMACI.
The installation, conceived by Laura Pugno, opens with a photograph, serving as an access portal. Laura Pugno’s Abendland [Land of the Sunset] (2023) (1), is a sunset landscape with a dual soul, a metaphor for the end and the beginning of a new era. The photograph depicts a rock immersed in shadow that emerges and stands out against the setting sun, a huge creature that forcefully lifts the forest and promises salvation. Abendland is also the title of the film poem by Austrian documentarian Nikolaus Geyrhalter. The concept of human failure, implicit in the documentary, is linked to Flaminia Veronesi’s poetic works, particularly in Rosa [Pink], from her series Ori [Gold] (2023), in which, thanks to the acceptance of this failure, a circular dance of rebirth and joy materializes: natural elements and imaginative figures interweave with each other. This idea of interconnection also emerges in the work Come micelio, noi multipli uniti [Like mycelium, we have multiple Unions] (2023) is a sculpture in polymer clay in which an entangled web of human beings takes shape. Like mycelial filaments, each living being is connected to others having both collective and individual identities.
If the notion of entanglement is akin to Flaminia Veronesi’s artistic research, Claudia Losi’s Tavole Vegetali [Vegetable Tables] (2012) are the tangible and material representation of the concept of symbiosis. In this series of works, which began in 1995, Losi has used embroidery to reproduce lichens - symbiotic partnerships resulting from the association of an alga and a fungus - of which she has collected images during her travels, creating moving microlandscapes.
Resulting from the interaction between art and science, Morfologie celesti (2023) are two works by Laura Pugno created in collaboration with biologists Enrica Lumini and Samuele Voyron (2). The mycelium, grown in a laboratory, has been shaped to obtain the representation of a night sky, which seems to observe and protect us. In the darkness everything seems still, but in reality, nature continues to move inexorably, grow, and create relationships. If one were to close their eyes, they might perceive the scent of the night, the scent of the undergrowth, its sound, – that which Takashi Homma would call Symphony – Mushrooms from the Forest.