Resi Girardello and Cristina Treppo

Two of the “Castles in the air” by Resi Girardello, made of metallised pink copper wire, are attached to the soft ramifications by Cristina Treppo which intercept their semi-transparent walls: an invasive installation, which winds between the branches of the trees in plant-like fantasies with tapestry motifs, in acid and phosphorescent colours. Flowers, leaves and fake berries, of various types and dimensions, are added to these structures, treated with metallised and silvered enamels, which are condensed in places into real sculptural masses, invading the space and sticking to the trunks. This work in collaboration, which seems to materialise relaxing fantasies of woods and castles of a spectator sitting on the bench below on the Promenade, combines features of the very original work of the two artists. Resi Girardello’s sculpture production has as its typical elements the use of metal wire or mesh and irony: as in the gigantic bra-fetish of “Oracle”, 2005, or in the corset-tower “Danae” (2006). In both works the gigantic garments become equally ironic monuments to femininity. The elements Girardello has included in this installation for OPEN 10 belong to the current series “Castles in the air”, groups of architectural objects to be presented suspended, vaguely inspired by chess pieces: light structures, with lace and naive curves that have the iconic romanticism of garden furniture. Here the Castles in the air are combined with Cristina Treppo’s vegetation, soft sculptures pervaded by a subtle vein of paradox. They belong to the research that Treppo has been developing for years, simultaneously in sculpture and in photography, on the illusions and paradoxes of the “Natural/Artificial”: silk flowers that seem real, corners of real landscape that seem plastic, artificial vegetation of fabric and plastic, with impossible colours, that invade architectural space (her installation entitled Landscapes, Spazio Eventi Libreria Mondadori, Venice, 2006; “Natural/artificial”, “Hicetnunc”, San Vito al Tagliamento, 2004). Gardens of the mind, illusive, acid, impossible, which grow in the sense of interaction with the real place, the real trees and plants on the Promenade at Lido near the Hotel Des Bains.