THURSDAY-sunday, 2-6PM

Suddenly in the Depths of the Woods

Antonio Della Guardia and Valentina Furian

CURATED BY Vasco Forconi

UNTIL 13 APRIL 2025

Suddenly the Depths of the Woods is a project of new commissions by artists Antonio Della Guardia and Valentina Furian, conceived for the outdoor spaces of the Tenuta Dello Scompiglio, and realized at the end of the residency programme Il giardino segreto (The Secret Garden) which took place between autumn 2023 and spring 2024.

The two interventions, imagined as temporary apparitions in the woods of the estate, stem from the desire to narrate the Scompiglio as a complex organism, offering visitors and the small community that lives and works here, two contrasting gazes—one endogenous, one exogenous—on some of the invisible forces that seem to order and govern this place.

Antonio Della Guardia has designed a large sculpture from the cast of a peculiar scar left by lightning along the trunk of a maritime pine. This sign, which in the artist’s eyes represents the trace of a poetic union between the sky and the earth, between the external and the internal of the estate, is analyzed and translated into a sculpture that reverses its course, developing from the undergrowth and lengthening towards the sky. Upon encountering visitors, the sculpture titled A voce di tuono transforms into a sound device aimed at suggesting the execution of a poetic and imaginative gesture.

By contrast, Valentina Furian presents a diffused sound intervention, a minimal yet pervasive trace, which insinuates itself like an interference in the acoustic landscape of the woods, inviting the activation of a dialogue with its animal inhabitants while also engaging the human audience. The work, titled Il tempo dei lupi and inspired by the recent return of wolves to the Vorno hills, is part of the artist’s broader research into the relationship between wild nature and domestication.

Bio

Antonio Della Guardia (Salerno, 1990) lives and works in Naples. His research focuses on the conditioning imposed by contemporary work on the body, cognitive processes and the most intimate spheres of private life, observing their signs and at the same time imagining poetic forms and processes of shared imagination. His work has been presented at several Italian and international institutions, including: MEC (Córdoba, Argentina), MAXXI (Rome), MUNTREF (Buenos Aires), Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Rome), MACRO (Rome), Triennale (Milan), Centrul De Interes (Cluj-Napoca), Fondazione Pastificio Cerere (Rome), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), Fondazione Izolyatsia (Kiev), Fondazione Morra Greco (Naples), Fondazione Antonio Ratti (Como), La Caja (Caracas), Ambasciata d'Italia (Bern), Istituto Italiano di Cultura (Krakow and Warsaw).

Valentina Furian (Venice, 1989) works mainly with moving images and time-based installations. Her research stems from the interspecies relationship between human beings and natural beings, investigating the value of the wild in everyday life and animal and human domestication as a form of power. Over the years she has collaborated with institutional and experimental spaces including ISCP – International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York; Fondazione Proa, Buenos Aires; Pearl Art Museum, Shanghai; International Meetings | Paris Berlin, IIC Paris; Sunaparanta Centre for Contemporary Art Goa, IIC Mumbai; Farnesina Collection, Rome; MAXXI –National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome; MUSE – Science Museum of Trento; MAMbo – Bologna Museum of Modern Art; The Blank Contemporary Art, Bergamo; Casa Capra, Vicenza; Stelline Foundation, Chez PLINIO, Case Chiuse, CareOf, ViaFarini, Milan; Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa, Venice; Microclima, Venice; Cinema Visionario, Udine; Goyki3 Art Inkubator, Sopot.

Ticket price
Opening
Suddenly in the Depths of the Woods
12 October 2024
free admission

Exhibition and permanent installations fee 
Thursday-Sunday 2-6PM, or by appointment: € 5,00

Contacts and reservations
SPE Ticket Office - Performance and Exhibition Space
tel. +39 0583 971125
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Associazione Culturale Dello Scompiglio
Via di Vorno, 67 – Vorno, Capannori (LU) Italy
tel. +39 0583 971475
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