Art and Sustainability: The Scattered Exhibition Returns to Castelfiorentino on May 13th with Davide Dall’Osso’s New Life for Plastic “Ex-Scraps”
Reuse, reduce, recycle, cooperate. The 4th edition of the scattered exhibition is titled “Community” and aims to stimulate collective reflection on one of the most pressing issues of our contemporary world: a new vision of interracial community capable of addressing the clear limitations of the consumption model, the need to manage our resources, and the new life of waste. This new project takes inspiration from the Earth Charter (United Nations), a “…declaration of fundamental ethical principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century… The Charter is a vision of hope and a call to action.” It is sponsored by Unicoop Firenze.
Artist Davide Dall’Osso’s reflection: “A sense of community is formed through sharing, dialogue, and acceptance. We all know that we are responsible for the community we belong to, and each of us, whether visible or hidden, makes a difference. This new installation in Castelfiorentino aims to be part of the intercultural dialogue in our town. Art serves as a medium between the people who inhabit the streets and neighborhoods of our community.”
Opening on Saturday, May 13, 2023, at 3:00 PM at Parco Piovanelli panoramic roundabout, under the Pieve dei Santi Ippolito e Biagio.
Castelfiorentino (Florence), March 28, 2023 – Davide Dall’Osso didn’t choose noble marble, mighty bronze, or neon lights. Instead, he sought out the discarded material that no one wanted, and it happened to be a common, abundant, and environmentally impactful material: plastic. Not post-consumer plastic waste that we’ve scattered across the globe but pre-waste plastic, the forms and casting scraps of plastic. Davide Dall’Osso’s artistic journey is truly unique, as he was one of the first to contemplate sustainability and create “recovery” art in Italy.
In this way, plastic, a symbol of the age of consumption, transforms itself and conveys a message of sustainability, respect, and dialogue. A synthetic, artificial, and impactful material finds new life through Dall’Osso’s craftsmanship and the dramatic context in which he places it. The discarded material encourages the community to become aware of a problem that already concerns us today: the scarcity of all Earth’s resources, and it invites reflection and action.
The works of Dall’Osso’s “ex-scraps” animate the 4th edition of the Scattered Exhibition, promoted by the Municipality of Castelfiorentino and the Metamorphosis Project, curated by Maria Vittoria Gozio. The opening will take place on Saturday, May 13, 2023, at 3:00 PM at Parco Piovanelli, below the panoramic roundabout, under the Pieve dei Santi Ippolito e Biagio. This year’s scattered exhibition, titled “Community,” fits into the context of a city that played a significant role in the industrial era and is now questioning how to design a new shared development under the leadership of a young and proactive municipal administration.
Art has a crucial role in this process. Thanks to Dall’Osso’s artworks, art reclaims public spaces, which have always been artistic spaces, and enters public and private life, bringing people together. This brings us back to “discards” and the “marginalized,” those who are on the fringes, and art naturally reunites them.
“We contacted the artist Davide Dall’Osso several years ago, and at first, we insisted on bringing him to Castelfiorentino,” says Mayor Alessio Falorni. “But soon, together with his wife, Vittoria, they fell in love with our city, even deciding to move here and open their Atelier in our town. From this life choice and from Davide Dall’Osso’s first exhibition in Castelfiorentino, the proposal to set up other scattered exhibitions dedicated to the circular economy theme emerged, with exhibitions related to names like Antonio Massarutto and Brunivo Buttarelli. Thus, the large Metamorphosis Project was born in collaboration with C.E.T.R.A. cultura and within the framework of municipal co-design. To close a circle, this year – the last of our mandate – it seemed right to conclude with a new exhibition by this great artist. Not to end a project, but as an invitation to start another. Therefore, we hope this can represent the beginning of a renewed artistic journey for our city.”
“Together with Atelier Dall’Osso,” notes Deputy Mayor with responsibility for Culture Claudia Centi, “the Administration was inspired to search for new outdoor spaces near museums, churches, or buildings of historical interest, so that our community could fully experience art and culture in contexts entirely different from what they were used to. Davide Dall’Osso’s new exhibition proposal offers an engaging and virtuous combination of the artistic and educational dimensions, represented precisely by recycling and the ‘second life’ offered to discarded plastic materials. Figurative, evocative, dreamlike works that speak directly to the heart and soul through the eyes.”
Among the artist’s favorite subjects are women, captured in their beauty, strength, but also delicacy and inner life, as seen in the works “Duende” and “Ballerine.” After all, Castelfiorentino is a place that has written pages of history in labor and the struggle for women’s emancipation, with the history of the “fiascaie” being emblematic in this regard.
The plastic materials, thanks to the moisture they collect and the air they trap, lend themselves to assume various forms with the particular processing chosen by the artist, allowing them to exude an ancient drama imbued with contemporary sentiment.
A significant portion of the polycarbonate waste used for the sculptures is supplied by the Prato-based company Isopad, which, as Davide Dall’Osso explains, “has a strong environmental sensitivity. They dedicate time, employees, and, therefore, resources to support my artistic journey, assisting me in the selection and collection process.”
In Castello, Davide Dall’Osso and his wife, Co-Founder & Creative Director of Atelier Dall’Osso snc, Maria Vittoria Gozio, found the “community to belong to” that they had long been searching for and that was not taken for granted. They decided to give something back to this community by investing in the local area.
As part of the Metamorphosis project, born from a co-design collaboration between the Municipality of Castelfiorentino, the C.E.T.R.A. Association, and Atelier Dall’Osso, a space dedicated to educational workshops and activities involving the exploration and experimentation with unstructured materials, in this case, industrial waste, has been created at Atelier Dall’Osso.
The Scattered Exhibition aligns with the project’s focus on tourism and culture, while another aspect of the project involves socio-educational activities, overseen by the C.E.T.R.A. Association. These activities include school, extracurricular, and teacher and educator training programs. The municipal summer educational activities are also partially planned to connect with the artists exhibiting in Castelfiorentino (Dall’Osso, Massarutto, Buttarelli).
