SILVIA TUCCIMEIFlower Power

SILVIA TUCCIMEIFlower Power

Curated by Donatella Cannova

Organization:

Istituto Italiano di Cultura di SydneyLevel 4, 125 York Street, Sydney NSW 2000 Tel.: +61 2 9261 1780, Fax: +61 2 9262 9333www.iicsydney.esteri.it

Director Donatella Cannova

Administration Paola VertechiProgramming Danilo Sidari, Martina GabbiaSecretary Fabio Pannuzzo

Translations by Paola Vertechiwith the contribution of Martina Gabbia

Special thanks to Svetlana Zazo for her support and hospitality

Cover Flower Power by Silvia Tuccimei

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We wish to express our heartfelt thanks to Silvia Tuccimei for her commitment to the arts.The sculpture Flower Power, presented at the international art show Sculpture by the Sea 2016 in

Sydney, is now permanently exhibited at the Residence of the Italian Ambassador in Canberra.

Donatella Cannova Pier Francesco Zazo

March 2017

Ambasciata d’ItaliaCanberra

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Foreword

The permanent installation in the gardens of the Residence of Silvia Tuccimei’s sculpture Flower Power makes deservedly proud not just myself, but also all those who have done their best to make it possible. The promotion of Italian contemporary art in Australia represents indeed a constant commitment of the Ital-ian Embassy and of the Italian Cultural Institutes in Sydney and Melbourne, who in the last few years have closely collaborated on several exhibitions of prominent Italian artists, active both at national and international level. Silvia Tuccimei’s sculpture as well as some of her paintings will now be added to the works, already permanently exhibited at the Residence, by artists such as Loris Liberatori and Giuseppe Modica – who have already featured in solo exhibitions at the two Italian Cultural Institutes – as well as Claudio Verna, Gianni Dessì, Eduardo Palumbo and Massimo Cat-alani, thus considerably enriching the core of the art collection of this Embassy.

The promotion of Italian language and culture is a priority of Italian foreign policy, indeed one of the cornerstones of a wider project aimed at an integrated promotion of Italy, today at the cen-tre of our international policies in a time when the challenges of a globalized world lead us to articulate a more sophisticated offer on an international level of the Italian spirit, a spirit that precisely in culture finds its most recognisable and prolific expression.

Aware of having inherited a historical and cultural legacy which is unique in the world for its extent and originality, and whose irre-producibility represents its hallmark, we strive to ensure that such legacy is passed down to future generations through its protection and conservation. At the same time, on these historical and cultur-al roots which safeguard our identity, we implant a modern vision of tradition through the contemporary language of our artists, who therefore contribute to write our present in a dynamic relationship between past and future.

We warmly welcome Silvia Tuccimei’s beautiful and ambitious sculpture, skilfully crafted in Florence by OMCF and presented last year at the largest sculpture exhibition in the world, Bondi’s

Sculpture by the Sea. Flower Power represents, in Sasha Grishin’s words, a member of the scientific committee of Sydney’s artistic kermesse and one of its adjudicators, “a contemplative instal-lation, and one that cannot be understood visually, but must be experienced with the heart”. And it is with her big heart, but also with her stubbornness and tenacity, that Silvia Tuccimei has pur-sued an artistic itinerary between Italy and Australia, which has reinvigorated her vision and offered fertile ground for her work. The large modular sculpture here permanently exhibited as from today represents one of the most important results of her research and experimentation in these last years of frequent travels to Australia. Not only does it decorate these spaces, but it is also an emblem of an Italian art which observes the world from an original perspec-tive, albeit firmly rooted in our great tradition. Silvia’s art reminds us that the world needs clear and sharp observers, artists and poets capable of guiding us beyond the immanence of the hic et nunc and to experiment moments of ecstatic contemplation.

Pier Francesco Zazo Italian Ambassador

Flower Power, Sculpture by the Sea 2016, Sydney

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Silvia Tuccimei, the long journey of artWe shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

(T.S. Eliot)

In 2013 Silvia Tuccimei exhibited for the first time in Australia at the international exhibition Sculpture by the Sea, where, as the only Italian artist, she presented the sculpture Passage Secret. I had only recently met the artist, and her exuberant personality intrigued me, as I was intrigued by her sculptures and paintings, whose reproductions in some catalogues she had shown me. I went to see her work, beautifully positioned within the natural sce-nery of the coastal walk between Bondi and Tamarama. A section of a metal cylinder with a two metre diameter, whose polished interior walls mirrored the blue of the ocean and the horizon, cre-ating inside the cylinder a perfect geometry. An open door onto the infinite to signal the secret passage (“is the gate here?” asked himself the poet), crossed by adults and children irresistibly drawn towards that tantalising circle of light.

In the stylistic and material purity of the sculpture I seemed to glimpse an aspect of the artist’s soul, the one capable of extracting from the magma of what is indistinguishable and of summarizing in an elementary shape a vision becoming a sign of her visual alpha-bet. By using a technical skill and a sense of proportions typical of those who know their artistry and have a solid training, with her work Silvia was indicating an escape route from the earthly cha-os, in search of a cosmic order. With that perfect circle the artist was vigorously asserting her intention to give a shape to Beauty, tapping into the rules of the classical canon, revisited through her personal artistic sensibility.

She was to achieve the same goal three years later, presen-ting again one of her sculptures at Sculpture by the Sea 2016. An even more ambitious work than Passage Secret in terms of size, weight and materials used, Silvia’s new work, entitled Flower Power, was now composed of three sculptures of identical shape but of decreasing size, from the largest measuring 300 cm in wi-

dth to the smallest measuring around 150 cm, for a total weight of 800 kg, made of entirely reflecting stainless steel. Beyond the remarkable technical and organizational endeavour, which invol-ved over 20 workers and was made possible by the patronage of OMCF, Florence, what is mostly striking in Silvia’s last work is the scope of her vision, which allows her to wilfully affirm her poetics and her view of the world, exemplified, once again, in a simple and telling form such as a flower. Indeed, in the classical notion of art typical of Silvia’s production, the artist is the demiurge, the creator who generates the world and who controls his creatures through a kind of internal metronome marking their rhythm and breath and determining their shape. At the same time, almost magically, her works have their own independent life, which al-lows them to react to the environment surrounding them, where, exposed to the atmospheric conditions, the changing of light and colours during the day, from dawn to sunset, they react almost like living organisms, vibrating and resonating with their own life.

A different story needs to be told about Silvia’s paintings. On canvas, the artist confronts her other self, the one dominated by the irrepressible power of pure creativity and exuberance, whi-ch manifest themselves dynamically in the pictorial gesture and in the choice of colours, where the exaltation of primary colours is brought almost to an excess, to then fade, in other paintings, through more soothing grey/pale blue tones. A recurring figure is the female body, monumental, once again a tribute to classici-sm mediated through the painting school of the thirties. Female bodies are represented as solitary cathedrals offering themselves to the viewer’s gaze, questioning him with their voluminous pre-sence and their desire to escape, their unrelenting pursuit of a denied half, to which they yearn to be reunited to go back to that beginning when The All ruled.

In this relentless journey from Chaos to Order, and back to Cha-os, we can probably find the key to understanding Silvia Tuccimei’s work. A research that alternates moments of quiet contemplation with stages of tumultuous creativity, as in a succession of seasons and climates. After all, those who search are constantly travelling, being the ultimate goal not the destination but the journey itself. Silvia Tuccimei tirelessly puts into practice the existence of the

wanderer, having extended her itinerary to the widest distance ima-ginable, the one between Italy (and France) and Australia. In her coming and going between the two hemispheres, she collects im-pressions, moods and sounds she then incorporates into her works,

which we can read as transitory answers to the meaning of life.

Donatella Cannova Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Sydney

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Flower Power, Sculpture by the Sea 2016, Sydney

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Silvia Tuccimei and the crafting of space

“If someone loves a flower of which just one exam-ple exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that is enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself ‘My flower is up there so-mewhere...’ ”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Silvia Tuccimei is an artist who loves to bring together that which at first glance would appear as irreconcilable states of being: permanence and ephemerality; solidity and fragility; chaos and order; organic and inorganic as well as animate and inanimate. Through an act of alchemy she seeks to create a physical sculp-tural object that serves as a conduit into a metaphysical realm, where our perceptions of the known are brought into question. They are works that allow us to peer into infinity and there catch a glimpse of ourselves.

In 2016 Tuccimei was selected, for the second time, to exhibit at Sculpture by the Sea at Bondi in Sydney – the world’s most popular outdoors sculpture exhibition – and her piece was also selected by a curatorial jury to subsequently travel to Sculpture by the Sea at Cottesloe in Perth in Western Australia. The sculpture, titled Flower Power, consists of a huge, abstracted six-petal flower outline, about 300cm across, fabricated out of mirrored stainless steel. This shape is repeated in two further identical modules, but each of smaller proportions, so that when the three modules line up, they become like a reflective secret passageway that mirrors its surroundings together with the viewer. If one can imagine the world as a huge looking glass with the earth being an echo of the sky, Tuccimei’s floral steel entrances capture an envelope of space between the earth and the sky that reflects both and allows us to pass through it.

The space created within the gleaming orbit of Flower Power is transient, a fleeting vision that is kinetic and changes with the movement of a cloud or a gust of wind. It is a space where that which one moment appears solid will dissolve and fade into an animated mass and the sheer multiplicity of reflections will cre-

ate a moving fabric of vision. The form of the flower has become a poignant universal symbol for freedom, especially the freedom to dream for a better existence. Victor Hugo, in Les Misérables, when characterising the noble bishop, provides what could be a description of Tuccimei’s sculpture when he writes, “Was not that narrow space with the sky its ceiling room enough for the worship of God in the most delicate of His works and in the most sublime? A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in – what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” With allusions to Voltaire’s Candide, Hugo refers to the holistic idea of the flower as a pathway to the celestial vision.

Tuccimei, working within the popular sculptural tradition of installed environments, creates within her symbolically charged floral form an environment that intentionally questions the natu-re of being. The title, Flower Power, already hints at her pattern of thought – on one hand it may allude to the popularist hippie anthems – but on the other, the title already carries within it a basic contradiction. A flower is fragile and vulnerable, but the idea of power implies strength and force. This meeting of opposites is inherent in the materials – steel that is powerful and long lasting – while a mirror finish, regardless of its actual manufacture, sug-gests a fleeting and ever changing brittle surface, impermanence.

For me, the sculptural installation Flower Power in the final analysis is about the beauty and fragility of life. Nowhere is this more clearly explained than in The Little Prince. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry writes, “For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it is not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It is not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? It is no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat red gentleman is adding up? Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what he is doing - that isn’t important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that is enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself ‘My

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flower is up there somewhere...’ But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it is as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that is not important?”

Tuccimei’s Flower Power is a contemplative installation, one that cannot be understood visually, but must be experienced with the heart, or as the Little Prince explains: “On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux” (“One sees clearly

only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye”). If one allows the heart to enter into her enchanted flower garden of the Flower Power, one may perceive that life is beautiful, despite its fragility, and that every life, like every flower, is precious, unique and has the whole universe reflected within its being.

Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA Australian National University

Flower Power, Sculpture by the Sea 2016, Sydney

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Silvia Tuccimei

Silvia Tuccimei was born in Rome in 1960. In 1983 she obtai-ned a diploma at the CSIA in Lugano, Switzerland and subsequently moved to Paris, where she attended for 10 years the Angel-Perez sculpture studio. The new environment caused Silvia to re-define her use of line, form and colour in a way that peels away the layers of the “seen world” in order to expose the under-lying fragility of life. For over 25 years Silvia has explored this theme through pain-ting and sculpture and established an international reputation that has her work in constant demand.

Latest Exibitions 2016 Sculpture by the Sea Bondi Australia2015 Alliance Française Institute of Sydney Australia 2015 Italian Cultural Institute of Sydney Australia2015 Hillview Sculpture Park Moss Vale Australia2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture Italy2014 Eden Park Gallery Sydney Australia2014 Sculpture by the Sea Cottesloe/Perth Australia2014 Sculpture by the Edge Bermagui Australia2014 Premio Arte Laguna Venise Italy2013 Gallery V Wollomolloo Sydney Australia 2013 Sculpture by the Sea Bondi Australia 2013 Designed the Stage for TEDxMacquarieUniversity 2013 Australia

Flower Power is composed of three sculptures of identical shape of decreasing size, from the largest measuring 300 cm in width to the smallest measuring around 150 cm, for a total weight of 800 kg, made of entirely reflecting stainless steel. Flower Power has been crafted in Italy thanks to the patronage of OMCF, Florence. Over 20 workers were employed at the cre-ation of the sculpture.

“An optical illusion invites a quantum journey beyond the time line, between landscapes of parallel dimensions. Portals of endless scenarios, where time and space roll up and unroll in a spiral. Harmonic connections as a symphony, floral scents, cosmic breath”. Statement from the catalogue Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2016.

Silvia Tuccimei

1 – Acrobati dalle dimensioni sottili, Mixed Media Sydney 2016 2 – Acrobati dalle dimensioni sottili, Mixed Media Sydney 2016

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3 – Acrobati dalle dimensioni sottili, Mixed Media Sydney 2016 4 – Acrobati dalle dimensioni sottili, Mixed Media Sydney 2016

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Out of the Box, Mixed Media/Paris Sydney 2014 Out of the Box, Mixed Media/Paris Sydney 2014

ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI CULTURALevel 4, 125 York Street,

Sydney, NSW 2000

Tel.: +61 2 9261 1780, Fax: +61 2 9262 9333

www.iicsydney.esteri.it

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