Ugo La Pietra: Five Urban Green Spaces Solo Show

Galleria Bianconi presents a personal exhibition by Ugo La Pietra entitled Five Urban Green Spaces. Expressed through a prolific repertoire of paintings, drawings, photomontages and ceramic sculptures, the exhibition is a kind of summa summarum on the theme of domestic, urban and non-urban green space that the author has developed between 1980 and 2016.Since the early 1980s Ugo La Pietra has focused much of his research work on the attempt to combine the conceptuality that marked his career in the 60sand 70s with the ever-increasing advancement of performance. Over the last 30 years his techno-poetic approach has exemplified these two classifications, which are  inspired by the “garden of the 18th century”,sometimes directly, but more often as an abstract reference, as with “a place for a pleasant pause (performance) and contemplation (conceptuality).”

In keeping with his commitment to operate outside the logic of pre-established systems, Ugo La Pietra came to conceive “Il giardino delle delizie” in 1985, a proposition that is nowadays associated with a radical critical interpretation of the urban green spaces found in our cities. His “Bosco in città”, for ex-ample, is a valid alternative to the “vertical garden” whilst his “Orti urbani” are an invitation to cultivate the many spaces available in residential areas; even with his “Erbari” and ‘Transgenici” the desire to find unpredictable but always plausible design solutions for the metropolitan landscape emerges.

The five urban green spaces identified by the author correspond to the series, “Colti dal mio Giardino”, “Erbario: libri aperti”, “Orti urbani/bosco in città”, “Il giardino delle delizie”, and “Transgenici”. Each series corresponds to the author’s exploration of and reflections on green spaces, which he uses to sketch out a map of the places he has personally observed and described, with proverbial elegance and irony. These are physical places reinterpreted through symbols and experimentation that go beyond the pursuit of the purely aesthetic aspect in order to reproach a society that should learn to live with green spaces.

There will be a special opening of the exhibition from Thursday 7 April till Sunday 10 April, between the hours of 10.00 am and 7.00 pm.