24 july – 4 november 2021 | San Quirico d’Orcia, Siena
In the 2021 edition, for the 50th anniversary of the event, Forme nel Verde hosts the exhibition “Reflexes”, by Helidon Xhixha, curated by Klodian Dedja with the artistic direction of Carlo Pizzichini. The installation of 12 monumental sculptures in polished steel shape the light in the most beautiful and representative places of the Terre di Siena. Starting from San Quirico in the splendid Horti Leonini and Piazza Chigi, we then arrive at the Chapel of Vitaleta. The route continues up to the famous Cypress trees on the Via Francigena, then up to the basin in the center of Bagno Vignoni and in Piazza del Duomo in Siena.
Reflexes – Sculptures of light: a widespread exhibition in the south of the province of Siena, in the Unesco Site of the Val d’Orcia, had never been seen before. And celebrating the fiftieth edition of Forme nel Verde, one of the longest-running open-air sculpture exhibitions in Italy, conceived by Mario Guidotti in 1971, with the shining steels of Helidon Xhixha, becomes, in the undulating sea of its hills, that composite epiphany of luminous beacons like safe havens, to which to land for an aesthetic joy of reflection, indeed! Then the re-flection, that is, looking back to restore a whole new light to the present, is also the respect that Xhixha demonstrates for the history of art, from which she draws and models monoliths, forms, sculptures of light, which translate into energy and power, but also on extremely topical issues, denouncing the ecological problems of enormous melting glaciers and floating bottles.
The cult of Nature, also capable of defending itself, today embraces and feeds on the light of the Artifice of a universal artist, worthy representative of a small Renaissance, of a historical moment in which it is increasingly evident, today as then, that life can truly be resurrected with art.
Reflect… The etymology of the word comes from reflectere, that is, to turn back, made up of RE-back and FLECTERE-fold. In physics, reflection consists in the return, by a surface, of a flow of energy which strikes it.
Turn back, turn to history, to its flow of energy, because it is history that reflects the present and the future.
This included Helidon Xhixha in his extraordinary work.
Matter is made of energy and the light sculptures that it offers us for the fiftieth edition of Forme nel Verde are Reflections, they are precious gems, they are sparkling pearls set in the intense green of the sixteenth-century garden, the Horti Leonini, in the center of San Quirico d ‘Orcia.
Five silver jewels hanging from the neck of a sky full of history, hanging in the emerald green of the holm oaks and boxwood, caressed by the hand of light that smoothes the surface of the steel, splendor of a magical mirror capable of reflecting and multiplying beauty of a seductive reality, real or imagined.
Helidon Xhixha’s sculptures are looking at you; and you look at them, in the mystical concept of the icon that shines with gold in the corner of the houses of Berat and they restore the light of the Durres sea to our veiled human penumbra. The divine Light, which comes from above, descends slowly along the surfaces of Xhixha’s sculptures, and reflects, illuminates us, shapes the undulations, descends to us, earthly, who are forced to raise our gaze towards the sky, towards the infinite, towards that light that welcomes us and warms us.
The monumental sculptures thus acquire a lasting mystical sense that connects heaven and earth, they are signals, spiritual stones driven into the shadow of the earth to illuminate it. They do it in the Chapel of Vitaleta, in dialogue with the prayers addressed to the Madonna, which intertwine with the segments of Knowledge to feed the soul with her needs. They reaffirm it in the mystical element of water in Bagno Vignoni and celebrate it among the wheat fields in the company of the cypress cenobites along the Via Cassia.
The splendor of the marbles of the Cathedral of Siena, then, embraces and welcomes their modern son because he too speaks, like them, of light, as a manifestation of the Divine.
