On October 13, Galleria Varsi presents “Adaptation”, a personal exhibition by Andreco, a transversal visual artist and PhD in environmental engineering specializing in sustainable design in different climatic conditions.
Andreco’s scientific research meets artistic research with the aim of creating a trans-disciplinary reflection on the relationship between human beings and nature and between natural and built space. In particular Andreco deals with anthropogenic impacts and investigates the possibilities of plants in environmental restoration and phytoremediation of water, fascinated by the rehabilitation capacity of plant organisms.
In Andreco’s works, art and science come together with accomplices and consolidate intentions. The scientific reality, always the source of his works, told through art becomes accessible and participatory, brings reflection to a sensitive and at the same time abstract level. The objective data are elaborated in symbols, ideal images that convey and synthesize with a few lines the complexity of the chemical-physical processes of nature and pay homage to them.
From a conceptual and philosophical point of view, Andreco’s work accomplishes a shift from the anthropocentric perspective into an ecocentric one.
Andreco’s artistic language is characterized by a strong expressive freedom. From the very beginning, the artist chooses to externalize his research through different media: drawing, painting, sculpture, performance (close to ritual and theater), favoring public space and nature as a place of expression. Debate is another essential tool for Andreco, which has been involved for several years in promoting interdisciplinary conferences on bio-phyto-remediation techniques. Specifically, “the word”, declaimed or written in monologues and slogans elaborated by him, or cited, assumes a central force in his works, real actions, reactions to the current environmental crisis and the proposal of a concrete and sustainable solution: “the plants are to ecosystems as revolutionaries are to society ”(Andreco).
“Adaptation” brings to the attention of the viewer the changes produced by the processes of man – environment interaction, where the first has become the main agent of transformation of the balance of the second, hence the term “Anthropocene”, coined by the biologist Eugene F. Stoemer to indicate the current geological era. Among the most obvious consequences of human action on the ecosystem today we note: the increase in temperatures, the rise of the seas, air, water and soil pollution, the decrease in biodiversity, severe phenomena in constant growth.
In the exhibition Andreco investigates the change of perspective that has taken place in the management of the effects of this impact. If at first the technical-scientific efforts and policies were focused on how to “avoid” the catastrophe “, today (we are inside the catastrophe) minds are committed to elaborating adaptation strategies and focus attention on” resilience “, a term applied in different disciplines that designates the ability to react in the face of a trauma, to “repair oneself” and again to adapt to an adverse context. These properties are inherent in plants, which are distinguished by their tolerability towards hostilities and their ability to regenerate after damage. Being sessile species, unable to move, plants “react” to unfavorable factors, they resist to survive. Another surprising feature of some plant organisms is the purification capacity for the reclamation of contaminated air, soil and water. Among the species used in plant technologies: hemp sativa, hybrid poplar, amaranth, vetiver, wild sunflower, ferns, linden, which are able to absorb, extract or filter toxic contaminants and stimulate processes of transpiration and degradation, the Reed of the Marsh, the Typha latifolia, the Carex riparia, the Rush, the Thalia dealbata, the Water lily, the Areca, the Rhapis excelsa, the Chamaedorea, the Dracaena and many others.
“Adaptation” is an act of awareness, a tribute to resistance and biological complexity. Andreco urges us to get back in touch with ourselves, to rethink ourselves as a whole and to take care of it, as the only way to survive.
In 2011 Andreco exhibited one of his works for the first time in New York, it is “Green Man”, an anthropomorphic sculpture covered with purifying plants, “a man of plants who purifies the air polluted by man in flesh and blood” Andreco affirms with a critical spirit. The man cannot be seen, he is not present in Andreco’s works, even in the gallery he is not there. Shells, minerals, plants, corals occupy the walls, yet it has always been there.
