SALVATORE ARANCIO PROJECT FOR VIVA ARTE VIVA
57th VENICE BIENNALE, 2017 | CURATED BY CHRISTINE MACEL

I have created a new large and ambitious installation that directly links to my video and will be inhabiting the adjacent open air space to the room I have been allocated. A sort of sculptural garden, which pieces I have realized in collaboration with the ancient Ceramica Gatti Faenza, in Italy, after inducing my collaborators to the same hypnotherapy session and through the creation of the pieces directly putting in practice its effects. 

Following the slightly tongue in cheek tone of the video, I envision the space as a sort of therapeutic “healing area” where visitors will be confronted by enigmatic primordial, if not science fictional, totemic formations, whilst being able to absorb this artistic enhancing aura before leaving the Biennale. 

The sculptural pieces are shaped by forms informed by the petrified trees of the “Lava Trees State Park” in the Hawaii Island, that preserves lava molds of the tree trunks that were formed when a lava flow swept through a forested area in 1790. 

By using a natural, material like clay to recreate the lava trees’ totemic presence and by toning the resulting shapes with iridescent, metallic glazes, I aim to create a work which is exciting and outstanding in his presence and scale, but it also make a link to my ongoing fascination about nature as a theatre for rituals, worships and self-induced trance states, employed for us to make a connection with something above us. 

Salvatore Arancio