Photography and sculpture at Forte Belvedere: Massimo Listi and Davide Rivalta
Until October 20th, Forte Belvedere hosts two important Italian artists: Massimo Listri, with the exhibition A perfect day, and Davide Rivalta, with My land, in a project conceived by Sergio Risaliti, promoted by the Municipality of Florence and organized by Mus.e.
Massimo Listri, known worldwide for the conceptual and poetic quality of his images, formerly a portraitist and then an acknowledged master of architecture and environment photography, brings 25 large-format photographs to the Forte Belvedere forming a spectacular gallery of Florentine views: interiors of well-known places of great beauty such as the Medici Chapels, the Palatine Gallery, the Uffizi, the Convent of San Marco and Palazzo Vecchio; but also the Florentine and suburban industrial spaces, from which he manages to create compositions ofgreat refinement and beauty like the most elegant museum environments.
Listri's works captures the visitors' gaze, transporting them to uncontaminated places, engulfed by an aura of sacredness. Here the presence of men is not allowed, if not in the works created by them: art and architecture are the only major protagonists, represented through the combination of ancient and modern, formal and abstract.
Davide Rivalta instead populates the outdoor spaces of the Fort, with its bronze sculptures, creating a surreal atmosphere for the visitor: buffaloes, rhinos, eagles, suspended in an infinite instant. Metal sculptures that seem rather made of mud, mirages on the horizon that are about to disintegrate, and yet, they appear at the same time majestic and concrete, releasing a life force that makes them absolutely real.
Rivalta also brings its wild animals indoors: the mighty rhino placed in the middle of one of the rooms seems to address with surprise the incoming visitors; while the site-specific work consisting of drawings of birds in flight realized on the walls of four rooms, shows us how the artist is able to communicate with the same strength both in sculpture and in the graphic language.
On the one hand, we have the theatrical and elegant beauty of Florentine environments in Listri's shots, on the other, a city invasion of Rivalta’s wild creatures. Two very different exhibitions, but both full of poetry and able to live armoniously in the same environment.