Tommaso Trini

Living Art/Living How

The paradigm of art-as-life continues to pose eternal questions. Alive, why? Living, how? Arguing that Gilardi’s idea of the living art object is more than analogy or metaphor, I will summarize the evolution of the concept of living that he has practiced from the Nature Carpets and Habitable Art exhibition (1966) to his most recent interactive works. Gilardi combines geological and biological forms, the human epic with the storytelling of the Earth. As such, a synthetic resin living-room carpet in is habitable, but so is the gravity of the solar system. He is, moreover, an activist against anthropocentric rule, against the destruction of eco-systems and the breathless pursuit of techno-scientific innovation. His “living art”, therefore, is made up of objects that intrude on other objects. Can these “living objects” speak to mankind without becoming idols or puppets?

Tommaso Trini is an art critic based in Milan who is widely recognized for his involvement in debates surrounding Arte Povera and related artistic movements across Europe. He has followed Gilardi’s work closely from the 1960s to the present, and contributed an essay to the catalogue of the celebrated exhibition for which Gilardi acted as an advisor and facilitator - When Attitudes Become Form (Works – Concepts – Processes – Situations – Information), Kunsthalle Bern, 1969.