Chianti Sculpture Park

Dal venerdì 21 maggio 2004
al

From Friday May 21, 2004
To Monday January 31, 2005

The Chianti sculpture Park has been inaugurated on 21st May in Pievasciata (Siena), the first park in Italy situated in a natural wood which is entirely dedicated to contemporary art international sculpture. The development of this unique open-air exhibition centre, which includes some majestic works made just for the park, consist in three main guidelines, proposed by the owner and organizer Piero Giadrossi: integration between art and culture, international spirit, variety of the artistic means of expression.
Twenty-four contemporary art sculptures in the woods – in the Chianti area, around Siena – are the exhibit, which results from a site-specific work, fundamental for the direct relationship of the artist with the space: the artists, form all over the world, have been invited first to analyze the place and the space, and then to create their work of art, integrating it with the surrounding natural environment.
They used many different materials – different qualities of stone and marble, metals, glass – to create sculptures and installations representing different cultures.
The sculptures are situated in the Park and the Furnace nearby: the twenty-one sculptures in the park have to be visited clock-wise, starting from the sculpture of the Danish artist Ursula Reuter Christiansen, The Blue Bridge, an arch made of iron and blue glass, symbol of the ideology from which the park stems: the synergy between the works of men and the work of nature. All the sculptures are the symbols of an ideology or an ideal: the man/nature relationship, the contrast between natural and artificial, the separation of different populations and the clash of cultures, the critics against cloning and the lack of respect towards nature and animals.
Australian artist Anita Glesta creates, with Dialogue a symbiotic and interactive relation between man and the environment. French artist Nicolas Bertoux, with Coin De Bois Blanc, challenges human perception: trunks of marble from Carrara, situated in a small escarpment around which there is the road, create a virtual plan which cannot be easily seen from naked eye.
The will of including almost invisible signs, perfectly fitting the natural environment around, can be seen in Limes by German artist Johannes Pfeiffer, a path on the edge of the white road with marble cobbles suspended on thin steel rods marking the border between the space of the visitor and the wild space of the woods, and they are a metaphor of the separation between the barbaric population and our ancestors.
The meeting-clash between different cultures is the theme of Faith and Illusion by Indonesian artist Dolorosa Sinaga, a sculpture made of round iron objects whose silhouette of a human figure, enclosed by two high elements refers to the pressure of progress on populations of the edge of the economic world. Leapfrog by Dominic Benhura, one of the most important representatives of the art of the African tribe of the Shona - who express themselves with traditional materials and tools, taking inspiration from an ancient mystic tradition – seems to reconcile itself with the Western world, presenting a game played by children all over the world.
A few metres away from the park, in the old Pievasciata Furnace, there are the three installations Homage to Brancusi by Benbow Bullock, Xaris by Adriano Visintin and The Milk Factory by Vincent Leow, a work representing a multi-coloured herd of cows made of glass fibres: an ironic critic to the lack of respect towards the nature of animals and cloning.
At the end of the exhibit there is an art gallery with small sculptures, many of which were made by the same artists of the Park.
In the Sculpture Park area a visitors' centre and an amphitheatre will be built for open-air cultural events and for temporary exhibitions, in collaboration with museums and contemporary art centres in Italy and abroad.

Information to the public
Chianti Sculpture Park
The Furnace - S.P., 9
53010 Pievasciata (Siena)
Phone: 0577.357151
Fax: 0577.357149
E-mail: info@chiantisculpturepark.it
Web: www.chiantisculpturepark.it

Season and opening time
From April to October; from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to sunset; Monday closed.
From November to March: on reservation
Ticket: 7.50 Euro; 5 Euro with discount

How to reach the park
A1 Motorway– exit Firenze Certosa
SS Firenze-Siena – exit Siena Nord
from Siena Nord towards Castellina in Chianti for 1.5 km, drive towards
Vagliagli for 8 km and then drive towards Pievasciata for 4 km until you reach a country road leading to the park.