Artistic Messages from Quarantine #1: Landscape Without Figures

Artribune launches a new column exploring existential themes through contemporary artworks during lockdown. The first installment focuses on landscape, featuring five Italian artists: Samantha Torrisi, Giuseppe Lana, Pierpaolo Curti, Davide Bramante, and Angelo Bellobono. Torrisi's painting "A metà cielo" (2018) reflects on human-nature balance and climate urgency, while her ongoing project "WayOut" investigates the empty spaces of Gibellina Nuova, rebuilt after the 1968 earthquake in Sicily's Belice Valley. Lana's installation "Zweisamkeit" (2018) critiques the automobile as a symbol of German technological progress and power, now reduced to ruin. Curti's "Gate 6" (2019) excludes human figures to place viewers in solitary contemplation. Bramante's multiple-exposure photograph "New York (La città che sale)" (2010), sold to Tiffany, depicts a timeless cityscape without people; his canceled Milan exhibition would have shown intimate views of Noto. Bellobono's "Paesaggio raschiato" (2019) argues for painting as silent resistance against image dictatorship, emphasizing embodied experience of landscape. The column is curated by Mercedes Auteri.