When art encounters the memory of miners
Art dialogues with nature and the history of the territory in the Archaeological Mines Park of San Silvestro. In particular, you can admire the Horizons in the Park installations by the artist Dario Bartolini and the photographs by Giovanni Breschi, inspired by the memory of the abandoned mines.
HORIZONS IN THE PARK, 1998. DARIO BARTOLINI
Sculptures scattered throughout the Archaeological Mines Park of San Silvestro give life to a permanent exhibition.
The shapes and colours of Horizons in the Park, created from iron, fire and glass, are the output of the laboratory that the Florentine sculptor Dario Bartolini set up in the 16th century Villa Lanzi.
Utmost respect for nature and the creation of almost «transparent» forms are the main features of the artist’s style.
And this is how, a little by surprise, the sculpted «presences» pop up here and there in the 450 hectares of San Silvestro.
Unstable works, just as their observers are changeable and unpredictable. Fragile, ephemeral and balanced, adapting to impervious ground. Works that slowly transform (rust pulverises the iron, hailstones break the glass), taken over by nature.
THE SIGNS OF MAN. "FROM MEMORY TO MATTER": GIOVANNI BRESCHI'S PHOTOGRAPHY
Giovanni Breschi’s photographs, inspired by the Archaeological Mines Park of San Silvestro, reveal the memory of these places; they are on show at the station of the Ortaccio tunnel mining train.
In the park’s guidebook, the author, Andrea Semplici, writes, “Thirty years after the mines closed, in 2006 a photographer wanders around the old installations, around the abandoned changing rooms and the engine rooms covered in dust. He stops in front of the number zero on a meter. He’s tempted to put on the headphones left hanging on a nail. These are the signs of Man. This is memory. But it is also matter that gradually transforms. Actually, in three decades it has already transformed. So, Giovanni Breschi, graphic designer and photographer from Florence, starts clicking. He points and shoots rust on a sheet of metal, the chaotic interlocking of blocked gears and cogs, the pointless signs warning of dangers that no longer exist” […].