Ondo presents Dove l’erba trema, the first solo exhibition by Cosimo Vella in Tuscany. The exhibition marks the fifth appointment in Ondo’s exhibition program, a project space dedicated to research on emerging artists with a particular focus on the Italian art scene. Offering an opportunity to survey Vella’s artistic trajectory, the exhibition includes a sculptural ceramic installation and a series of works on paper, both mediums that have long characterized the artist’s practice. The exhibition will be on view at Ondo from 13 December to 1 February 2025.
At the center of the exhibition space rises the large Barricata which, almost blocking the passage, becomes a repelling presence, a gesture of protest. Inspired by the actions of a group of activist farmers, the work conveys—through its scale and iconographic density—some of the transformations of the rural landscape that the artist investigates. At the same time, the large installation becomes a metaphor for Vella’s sculptural practice: a unified constructive action that welcomes and regenerates elements taken, wholly or in part, from previous works, transforming them into new formal germinations. Tree trunks, banners, mud-covered tractors, abandoned pottery compose the barricade and branch out from it like “scattered splinters”: fences, tents, huts, and construction nets. An eclectic panorama emerges, revealing different approaches to ceramic working: massive, grounded parts alongside upward projections; shifts in scale from 1:1 to miniature; direct casts and hand-built forms.
The vividness and immediacy of the sculptural works is echoed in the graphic mark of the group of charcoal drawings that complete the exhibition. Wind turbines, planted trees, remnants of an anthropized landscape, visual notes of agricultural machinery all appear. Recurrent is the subject of trees in protest, intent on holding what seem to be banners, though they could just as well be cloths or sheets left to dry in the sun. It is an indeterminacy that rests on the threshold between protest and proposal: the signs do not display slogans but remain empty, available surfaces capable of hosting ideas yet to be imagined. Thus the drawings, like their subjects, become devices for new possibilities and alternative perspectives, ready to give rise to what has not yet been written.
Dove l’erba trema portrays a rural landscape marked by forms of collective dissent and fits into Cosimo Vella’s research by highlighting feelings and impulses that remain at the margins of history. Here, criticism of soil pollution intertwines with a reinterpretation of agricultural symbols, which shift from tools of labor to agents of social emancipation. In contrast to a political narrative often centered on large cities, the project investigates what happens off-screen through a formal exploration of ceramics and drawing.
Ondo presents Dove l’erba trema, the first solo exhibition by Cosimo Vella in Tuscany. The exhibition marks the fifth appointment in Ondo’s exhibition program, a project space dedicated to research on emerging artists with a particular focus on the Italian art scene. Offering an opportunity to survey Vella’s artistic trajectory, the exhibition includes a sculptural ceramic installation and a series of works on paper, both mediums that have long characterized the artist’s practice. The exhibition will be on view at Ondo from 13 December to 1 February 2025.
At the center of the exhibition space rises the large Barricata which, almost blocking the passage, becomes a repelling presence, a gesture of protest. Inspired by the actions of a group of activist farmers, the work conveys—through its scale and iconographic density—some of the transformations of the rural landscape that the artist investigates. At the same time, the large installation becomes a metaphor for Vella’s sculptural practice: a unified constructive action that welcomes and regenerates elements taken, wholly or in part, from previous works, transforming them into new formal germinations. Tree trunks, banners, mud-covered tractors, abandoned pottery compose the barricade and branch out from it like “scattered splinters”: fences, tents, huts, and construction nets. An eclectic panorama emerges, revealing different approaches to ceramic working: massive, grounded parts alongside upward projections; shifts in scale from 1:1 to miniature; direct casts and hand-built forms.
The vividness and immediacy of the sculptural works is echoed in the graphic mark of the group of charcoal drawings that complete the exhibition. Wind turbines, planted trees, remnants of an anthropized landscape, visual notes of agricultural machinery all appear. Recurrent is the subject of trees in protest, intent on holding what seem to be banners, though they could just as well be cloths or sheets left to dry in the sun. It is an indeterminacy that rests on the threshold between protest and proposal: the signs do not display slogans but remain empty, available surfaces capable of hosting ideas yet to be imagined. Thus the drawings, like their subjects, become devices for new possibilities and alternative perspectives, ready to give rise to what has not yet been written.
Dove l’erba trema portrays a rural landscape marked by forms of collective dissent and fits into Cosimo Vella’s research by highlighting feelings and impulses that remain at the margins of history. Here, criticism of soil pollution intertwines with a reinterpretation of agricultural symbols, which shift from tools of labor to agents of social emancipation. In contrast to a political narrative often centered on large cities, the project investigates what happens off-screen through a formal exploration of ceramics and drawing.