Hilario Isola’s exhibition at the Bonomo gallery in Rome
Today’s Italian countryside is at the center of Hilario Isola’s research, on display at the Valentina Bonomo gallery in Rome with a series of works that draw on agricultural networks
One of the main themes of the research of Ilario Isola (Turin, 1976) is the relationship between man and agriculture, with particular attention to balance with the environment through the use of traditional techniques such as beekeeping and winemaking. For ruralhis latest malla Valentina Bonomo gallery in Rome, the artist presented a series of new works, conceived as stages of an exploration of the contemporary Italian countryside. Images made with a technique, based on the stitching and overlapping of agricultural nets used to protect the plantations from hail, ultraviolet rays and birds, sewn by hand in order to create interesting plays of light and shadow. A sort of mesh weaving of different optical widths, which visually recalls the etching technique, frequently used for illustrations in botanical books, as if to suggest a symbolic and almost nineteenth-century dimension of the exhibition.
THE EXHIBITION OF HILARIO ISOLA IN ROME
“‘rural’ is an exhibition that reveals lesser-known aspects of the countryside, different from the one described by the explorers who inspired me, to underline how the new cultivation techniques are always from safeguarding the natural environment”, Says Isola. Moving from micro to macro, the works are presented as visions of a disturbing and dystopian environment, populated by predatory insects such as caterpillars and chrysopes, but also by sprinklers similar to fantastic animals. Very successful landscape views, come on Stormwith particularly dramatic tones, Hail And silos, which has a chromatic structure similar to the photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher; in these works the illustration gives way to a more interpretative and less descriptive structure of the image. rural it thus reveals itself as an original way of suggesting reflections on worrying evolution towards monoculturesdependent on production systems and the market, which the artist has transformed into a small Grand Tour of the global threats that every day endanger a planet that is increasingly at risk.
– Ludovico Pratesi