Giorgio Andreotta Calò (Venice, 1979) is the winner of the first edition of the ACP Green Art Award, the award founded in 2021 by ACP - Palazzo Franchetti and by the company Art Capital Partners, with the patronage of MITE - Ministry of Ecological Transition, aimed at developing proposals on the urgent issue of preserving the planet and renewable energies. The award is aimed at an artist or a collective of artists who, by addressing sustainability issues, become a means of disseminating issues related to clean water and sanitation, climate change, affordable and clean energy, sustainable city and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, life on land: all objectives included in the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development of the United Nations.
The winner of this first edition, selected by a jury of experts, is Giorgio Andreotta Calò, chosen for his ability to demonstrate in his artistic research, the complex dialectic between anthropic and natural elements, the coexistence between man and nature. The artist participates with three of his iconic works: Pinna Nobilis, Corotaggio, Untitled (in girum imus nocte). The most voted will enter the permanent collection of ACP - Art Capital Partners Palazzo Franchetti. The public, special juror, will be able to admire them from 5 July to 27 November 2022 in a dedicated exhibition inside ACP - Palazzo Franchetti. The winning work will be voted by the jury and the public and will be able to click on his preference on the website www.acp-palazzofranchetti.com in the viewing room dedicated until 30 June 2022. The award ceremony will take place on Tuesday 5 July, and is scheduled also a round table open to the public on the themes and the work of Giorgio Andreotta Calò which will also be attended by the members of the jury.
Pinna Nobilis
© ACP – Art Capital Partners | Giorgio Andreotta Calò | Ph: Studio Giorgio Andreotta Calò
One of the competing sculptures is Pinna Nobilis made of bronze starting from 2014: it depicts a life-size specimen of Pinna Nobilis, shell of the homonymous bivalve mollusk, the largest present in the Mediterranean waters, whose survival is threatened by anthropic activities. Next to the central body consisting of the shell, the metal sprues and the entrance are integral elements of the sculpture, traces of the lost wax casting process and at the same time supporting elements of the work itself.
The Pinna Nobilis series includes various themes that cross the artist's research: the gaze on the landscape and in particular on the Venice lagoon, from which Andreotta Calò extracts some fragments and re-elaborates them into objects with a strong evocative charge.
Carotaggio (Venezia)
With the carotaggi (core drilling) di Venezia, extracted from 2014 from the subsoil of the lagoon, several layers of material were found, including caranto, a compact over-consolidated clay, which constitutes what supports the foundations of the city of Venice. In these works we find various themes addressed by Calò: the representation of time, the mutability of matter and a reflection on the Venice lagoon, whose elements subtracted from the landscape and reworked by the artist become objects carrying universal meanings.
In questi lavori si ritrovano diverse tematiche affrontate da Giorgio Andreotta Calò nella sua ricerca: la rappresentazione del tempo, la mutevolezza della materia ed una riflessione sulla laguna di Venezia, i cui elementi sottratti dal paesaggio e rielaborati dall’artista diventano oggetti portatori di significati universali.
Senza titolo (in girum imus nocte)
Untitled (in girum imus nocte) is a sculpture created by the artist in 2016. The genesis of the work is linked to the period and to the research carried out by Calò in Sulcis Iglesiente, in south-western Sardinia, starting from 2013. The wooden element from which the aluminum casting originates is used by the miners in the film In girum imus nocte (2015) and in the action it documents, a nocturnal walk from Carbosulcis, the last active mine in Italy, to the island of Sant'Antiochus. The work also alludes to the configuration of the stick, evoking, according to a primordial meaning, the ritual dimension linked to the action of walking in the artist's practice.