Under the Sun, Beyond the Skin

Under the Sun, Beyond the Skin is a site-specific project arising from the long-term collaboration between Fondazione Furla and GAM, which for the first time is being developed exclusively in the outdoor spaces of the Villa Reale gardens, providing new scope for interaction between contemporary art, the natural landscape, and public spaces.

Under the Sun, Beyond the Skin features a series of new productions designed specifically for the unique context of the Villa Reale parklands, stemming from a reflection on the garden as a place where nature is functional to the landscape design: a human construction, modelled according to aesthetic, philosophical or social canons, where natural elements and cultural superstructures intertwine. Setting out from this dualism between nature and artifice, Sara Enrico devised “a landscape within a landscape” through a series of sculptures that inhabit the garden without blending into it but, on the contrary, triggering a subtle tension between the plant kingdom and a notion of synthetic vitality, between what arises spontaneously and what is the upshot of a deliberate gesture. Ever a place of representation and reflection, the garden here becomes a space of resonance in which the artist’s works dialogue with the surroundings, giving rise to a delicate equilibrium in terms of continuity and friction between the work, the setting, and the audience.

Approaching the garden as an exceptional exhibition space, the artist has devised five installations located at different points in the park, along a path that crosses it in its entirety. In historical gardens, such as those of Villa Reale, the architectural component plays an essential role in defining the identity of the space. Pavilions, temples, bridges, and sculptures blend in with the vegetation, constructing a visual and symbolic narrative designed to evoke suggestions and accompany visitors on a journey of discovery. This coexistence of nature and architecture guided Enrico in the articulation of the exhibition path, which winds through the garden along its architectural lines, its fulls and voids, verticality and horizontality, its natural and constructed rhythm.
(excerpt from the text by B. Roccasalva)

Sara Enrico, Under the Sun, Beyond the Skin is a new project of the Furla Series, the program promoted by Fondazione Furla, organized in close collaboration with major ltalian art institutions. The exhibition is the upshot of collaboration between Fondazione Furla and GAM: a longterm partnership undertaken in 2021.