Who are you calling a vegetable?
“Who are you calling a vegetable? . . . If plants could talk, perhaps this would be one of the first questions they would ask us.” This is the last sentence in the introduction of Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola’s book, BRILLIANT GREEN. This seems to be the question permeating all Anna Marzuttini’s works. In her first solo exhibition in Udine “CAN’T SEE THE WOOD” the artist presents a series of new works dealing with RE-SIGNATION, the conceptual field that encapsulates SMDOT/contemporary art’s programming for 2024.
The title of the exhibition, “CAN’T SEE THE WOOD” comes from the English expression “CAN’T SEE THE WOOD FOR THE TREES,” aiming to draw attention to the difficulty—and sometimes the unwillingness—to turn our human gaze and our undivided attention to the global situation, concentrating instead on looking at things too closely, focusing excessively on what is near, on what is easier to see. Missing out on “The big picture”, failing to see the overall view. Through an aesthetic exercise stimulated by her works, Anna Marzuttini’s large canvases and ceramic sculptures force us to a new sensitive re-cognition of the world, of a world that existed before us humans, before animals, and that will certainly survive us. The world’s intelligent heart is taken for granted, and humans often use “vegetable” as a derogatory term referring to passiveness, because the plant world is not always in motion. However, this means it has evolved to favour solving problems rather than running away in typical animal mode. The so-called vegetable world has our five senses and at least fifteen others. It does not need our organs to live thanks to its structure: indeed its vital functions exist in almost every part of it. We are immersed in the plant world, but too often we don’t know, recognize, or respect it, and often we do not take care of: it would perhaps be fairer to say we do not allow it to take care of us.
Anna’s works observe us, interrogate us, they rebel, warn us, give us the opportunity to redirect our gaze, to look beyond the individual, to try and learn again to exist rather than just function. The word exist comes from Latin “exisistere” and can be translated as “being” (sistere), outside (ex), therefore an invitation to learn again to coexist, to be out there with everything, not against everything, not trying to dominate everything. Her large pictorial works, in particular, seem to remind us that, if in general painting can be thought of, that is theorised, like all visual arts, then surely one can paint a thought. In this case the figuration sought and found by Anna is the exhilarating violence of the invisible in everything that is visible. Her paintings do not depict, but rather they show us what we can no longer see, that which we have neglected out of sheer laziness. Anna uses her artistic research as if she were a shaman: she produces her images and her sculptures as tools of mediation with the spirit of the forest, trying to direct our gaze, our thinking towards an idea of coexistence. Between science and magic, between humanity and nature, between woman and man, between evil and good, between right and wrong . . . showing us the need to rediscover a daily practice of total balance of life forms, human, animal and plant, but also visible and invisible, as they still populate that immense meta-organism that is the Amazon forest, a place of vital resistance and example. In the works there is no depiction of human beings or animals. The works are always a manifestation of an absence, that of the artist and then of the beholder, without which they would not exist. Her ambitious research explores the necessary figuration of a hyper-form of life. Three large canvases, with different landscapes turning to “portraits” invite us towards this urgency of recognition and change. La Montagna Vivente, (2023, acrylic, acrylic spray on canvas, 200×150 cm), invites us to listen to everything around us, L’Era Incandescente (2023, acrylic and acrylic spray on canvas, 200×390 cm), signals the urgency of our action for change, Eclissi Terrestre (2023, graphite, acrylic, acrylic spray on canvas, 200×170 cm) is a reflection on the beauty of our fleetingness. On the other hand, the installation Regno Antico, (series, 2023–24, installation, variable dimensions) and the Spore series of paintings, (pt.3, 2023, mixed media on canvas, 35×28 cm each) with Corteccia (2023, glazed pottery, 26x14x5, 20×5 cm) show the vital detail of the plant world’s ability to resist.
The entire body of work on display represents a fruitful opportunity for the public, through contact with aesthetic objects/subjects, of building and experiencing a new planetary thought in spaces of cohabitation. The non-human, water and sky, with all that it contains, must enter our community as quickly as possible, otherwise we will be left unhappy and defeated. Not so smart in the end.
—Stefano Monti
at SMDOT/Contemporary Art, Udine
until March 3, 2024