Gilberto Zorio

Gilberto Zorio is one of the protagonists of the Arte Povera phenomenon and, in a wider sense, of the stance that yet today encourages different generations of artists to attempt overcoming the notion of art as the crafting of completed and independent forms.

Since 1966 Zorio's anti-academic strategy undermines the foundations of the bella forma and poses itself as a reaction and antagonist in order to differentiate itself from the reigning formalism characterising (in a more or less conscious manner) the neo-avantgarde and rational approaches of a sizeable part of the American and European conceptual art of the postwar period.

Receptive to the radical changes in the production methods and aesthetics deriving from the availability of new materials and devices from the world of advanced technology, Zorio explores fluidity, elastic properties, chemical components and the physical reactions of products and substances used in science and industry. The volubility of the physical state of his first sculptures, the ephemeral quality and necessary processes of transformation of some of his creations and the chemical reactions prepared by the artist, contribute towards exalting even more their specific properties as the techniques underlying his work are revealed. Reacting chemicals, alchemic combinations obtained through the use of electric conductors or by stimulating the acidic or basic character of the chosen substances, the phosphorus, the Wood lights and the possibility of seeing that which in normal conditions would be invisible; these are but a few of the factors of a constant tension towards an art demanding experience and participation.

For this reason, each exhibition by Zorio entails a preliminary analysis of the intervention context. His creations are adapted to the space and contrast through the antagonism and dialectic that carry the spectator and the artist himself beyond the limits of the action boundaries.

His desire to defy spaces leads him to envisage the Torri-Stella: architectural interventions carried out within the structures he is invited to operate in; fortresses and devices which are at the same time works in themselves and distributive conjunctions of different pieces summoned by the artist to convey their own story. Each Torre-Stella represents for Zorio the dynamic heart of a new exhibition and the derivation from his preceding artistic practice.

With the occasion of the exhibition held at CGAC in Santiago de Compostela, the Torre-Stella is open, revealing its heart, thus making it possible for the spectator's experience of walking through this architectural womb, muddling up spatial references and enabling the display of the dynamism of the works hidden within.

Gilberto Zorio was born in 1944 in Andorno Micca (Biella). He lives and works in Turin.

Gilberto Zorio
Curator: Gianfranco Maraniello