RADICI, 2020

RADICI, Museo Carlo Bilotti
Rome, 15 September / 13 December 2020

Exhibition hosted within the city’s cultural program BACK TO NATURE, curated by Costantino D’Orazio

Stone, earth, animal and plant life – silent witnesses to natural phenomena and human history – are at the heart of Benedetto Pietromarchi’s poetics.His work focuses on the relationship between nature and artifice, biology and construction, and how these concepts are perceived within our cultural system and experience.
For the Carlo Bilotti Museum, the artist has conceived a project that takes into account the unique characteristics of its location, particularly its connection to Villa Borghese and its rich tree population.
Alongside drawings and sculptures, Pietromarchi presented also three large environmental installations, made from the detached roots of some trees: an olive tree, an oak tree and a cypress tree – the latter recovered precisely at Villa Borghese. These works serve as memorials to the violent force of nature, and the fear and respect it must instill. Pietromarchi intervenes in this forceful narrative by introducing a sense of potentiality: grafted onto the seemingly inert wood are thistle flowers, sculpted in lead and bristle. The artist deliberately selected this resilient and stoic plant as a symbol of possible rebirth.This exhibition was curated by Paolo Falcone.