The exhibition, realised with the patronage and collaboration of the Comune di Cremona, tells of a territory in an evident state of profound suffering and particularly dear to the artist: the ‘fragile banks’ are in fact those of the Po and Favini, who often deals with themes linked to the environment and the transformation of the natural contexts and landscapes that surround us, has made them the subject of his research. Since 2007, the artist has been collecting ‘green messages’ that, used as a form of marketing, are often instead examples of greenwashing, i.e. of a façade ecologism.
Connected to this is the project The Real Revolution is Not Changing the World: images taken from photographic archives of apparently pristine landscapes, thickly covered with greenwashing slogans that disturb the view. It is precisely those slogans, however, that determine the negative fate of those landscapes. Gathered together, decontextualised, juxtaposed like a series of pixels, the texts are even more ambiguous, disturbing the image just as they did to the landscapes depicted.
The exhibition hosts examples of these images tarnished with writing, together with other works dedicated to the river, born from a thorough geographic, cartographic, morphological and commercial analysis: a backlit reflecting metal sculpture in which the course of the Po is depicted, an installation with the banks of the river modelled in cement as a frieze on the floor, a series of rhomboid signposts in red and white fabric – the ones actually found on the banks of the river – that lead to the gallery visit.
Fragile Rive thus becomes a work dedicated to the history of Cremona, the natural venue of the exhibition not only because of the bond that the artist, who was born and lives here, has with it, but also and above all because of the central role that the great river has always played in the city.
