Within the yr of the Plinian Bimillenary, which Como celebrates in 2023 and 2024, the Como Arte Basis, in collaboration with the Municipality of Como and the Accademia Pliniana, and underneath the patronage of the Nationwide Committee for the Celebrations of the Two Thousandth Anniversary of the Delivery of Pliny the Elder, pays homage to considered one of Como’s most illustrious residents, proposing a brand new key to decoding Pliny’s immense and nonetheless residing work.

The exhibition places in dialogue, within the neoclassical rooms of Villa Olmo, works by 18 up to date artists with archaeological finds relationship again to historical Roman instances and coming from the Paolo Giovio Archaeological Museum in Como, the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome, the Museum of Pure Historical past in Milan, and with historical prints from the Achille Bertarelli Assortment of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, each current for the primary time in Como, and from the Naturalistic Collections of the Liceo Alessandro Volta in Como.

It’s an formidable operation that demonstrates how the central themes in Pliny’s reflection—particularly, the fragility of data and human beings, science and pure phenomena, the use and abuse of land, and the livid response of nature when it’s violated—are nonetheless of essential significance in up to date reflection and manufacturing.

The works of the 18 artists, chosen by curator Sonia D’Alto, vary throughout a variety of inventive languages—from textile artwork to video artwork, from site-specific set up to collage—and are positioned in shut dialogue with historical artifacts and prints, restoring a imaginative and prescient of overbearing topicality.

The metaphor of the volcano—an erotic power linked to nature, dying, and rebirth—surfaces all through the exhibition. This similar power, primal and overwhelming, is featured in Susan Sontag’s novel The Volcano Lover (1992), which impressed the exhibition’s subtitle. The volcano theme can be central to Pliny’s biography, as it’s inextricably linked to the tragic occasion by which he misplaced his life in 79 AD.

The exhibition investigates the obsession with surprise, discovery, and information. A ardour so sturdy in Pliny—a lover of the cosmos and of the human being—that it led him to dying with a purpose to save his fellow man and observe up shut one of the crucial highly effective phenomena in nature: the volcanic eruption.

Curated by:
Sonia D’Alto

Patecipating artists: Maria Theresa Alves, Yto Barrada, Mirella Bentivoglio, Rossella Biscotti, Jimmie Durham, Chioma Ebimana, Rose Marie Eggmann, Petrit Halilaj, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Pauline Julier, Mike Kelley, Lavanya Mani, Aldo Mondino, Raffaella Naldi Rossano, Diana Policarpo, Nico Vascellari, Alice Visentin, Slavs and Tatars.

at Villa Olmo, Como
till January 7, 2024