3 March 2018 | Galleria Cesare Olmastroni – Palazzo Patrizi, Siena
4 -18 March 2018
Solo exhibition by Davide Dall’Osso “It’s time to listen” curated by Maurizio Vanni.
The exhibition created by the Biale Cerruti Art Gallery, promoted and sponsored by the Municipality of Siena and the Associazione Senesi nel mondo, was included in the “Siena Open City Cultural Festival 2018”.
“It’s time to listen” is the first verse of the poem “For a clandestine theater” by Antonio Neiwiller that the sculptor Davide Dall’Osso has identified as his own poetic manifesto.
The motivation that led to the creation of the exhibition “It’s time to listen” stems from the need to “make an appeal to remedy this existential condition of uncertainty and torment, which has brought men and women to the threshold of a sterile and self-destructive”. An appeal that the sculptor addresses to each of us, because only by listening, “keeping silence within oneself”, men and women will be able to begin to recognize each other, to find each other. In this perspective, the wish of Victoria Ocampo sounds particularly timely, as she argued: “a union between man and woman will be born that is much truer, much stronger, much more worthy of respect. The magnificent union of two equal beings who enrich each other because they possess distinct riches.
Throughout the exhibition, works such as “Lenisci”, “Delle Onde”, “Della Sabbia” or “I centauri” tell of this relationship in the making, where male and female attract each other, dance the rituals of nature, confront each other. Dall’Osso argues that “above all the man of our time must intervene on himself, find a new vision of himself, a new way of relating to women under the banner of a fundamental attitude: respect; man is called to respect women and himself in the name of the common dignity of the person”.
Every man must fully understand the “traditional male-dominated conceptions” of violence and prejudice that deny autonomy to women, considered a “thing” that men can freely dispose of, a toy to be broken if they are unable to dispose of it as they please. “No man of my time – continues Dall’Osso – is free from it. No man can get out of it. For this we must understand as sincerely as possible what men we are, how responsible we feel for a reality where men humiliate, rape and continually kill women. It is not enough to be ‘good men’. One more step is needed; come to terms with our conscience to the end, give us the sincere answer and remedy; because every man is responsible”.
This exhibition is a first step by Davide Dall’Osso on this reflection, an “agitated reflection” that the artist addresses to all the men and women of his time. The works that make up the itinerary of the exhibition created through the metamorphic transparencies of polycarbonate fusions or material amalgams of iron and cement, tell of that primordial feminine energy that pervades humanity and which is the foundation of every individual’s nature. “Dall’Osso’s sculptures – underlines the curator of the exhibition Maurizio Vanni – are always projected in a precise direction, they always seek a reason to exist in the organization of space and in the relationship with light. They enhance a state of momentary visual liquidity to accentuate a slow and constant movement. Everything is silent, but at the same time a silent cry is intercepted, liberating and ritual, which breaks the walls of the muffled prisons of our existences”.
Since the beginning of our existence, there have been two archetypal poles of nature; bright and dark, masculine and feminine, rigid and supple, above and below, etc. The works exhibited in this personal exhibition almost entirely represent one of these two archetypal poles, the feminine, which in Eastern philosophy is identified in the Yin, and which is the foundation of the nature of each individual.
Yin and Yang the two cornerstones of the human being. Yang, the creative, masculine, strong power, associated with the sky, while Yin, the feminine and maternal, dark, receptive element, represented by the earth. In the field of thought Yin is the intuitive and complex female mind, the contemplative stillness of the wise.
The theme and title of the exhibition, and of the related catalogue, “It’s time to listen” refers to the contemplative-intuitive and welcoming listening to Yin, that listening that according to the artist “we must cultivate day by day in the ‘intimacy of what Neiwiller called our secluded open place. Known works by the sculptor such as “Ventocontro”, “Angela”, “Duende”, ask the daily action, forced by a present built in the image of the masculine, to rediscover with the subtle energy of the Yin that silence, that act that takes place before creation with the aim of “recognizing us all, as (universal) human beings and (irreducible) individuals”, as beings who share their own existence.