Piero Gilardi

 Piero Gilardi was an influential figure in the Arte Povera movement, or 'poor art' as it is more commonly known as, throughout the 1960's, a movement that still influences artists today.  From the outset, he was concerned with creating social relations with his art, using interactive sculptures and his creative work with social and political movements.


Nature Carpets
These beautiful carpets are made of Bayer brand polyurethane foam, and soaked in synthetic pigment dissolved in epoxy resin. They are then calved, into natural objects, however they are manipulated to look very theatrical, and slightly over-the-top on their appearance. When being created, Gilardi explained that their softness suggested comfort, all he did was was add a latent longing for a certain idea of nature. The effect is that of an artificial nature whereby the wonders and mysteries of real nature stimulate the brain but manifest themselves elementally under one's foot. 

I like the effect that this carpet holds, it looks very theatrical with the corns being made almost 3 times as big as to a real corn. each one is shaped with exaggeration  the nobbled bits are cut deeper to show what the object is, perhaps from a distance or if it was to placed on the set of a stage, so it can be clearly seen.



















To choose a carpets subject matter, Gilardi looks into the collective subconscious and into his childhood visions and when it comes to the modelling process, by carving, he uses technology which he says is very varied and inventive  in order to avoid the mechanism of representation at all times in favour of visual stimuli. 
Gilardi came up with the idea of creating these carpets one afternoon when he was chatting with a friend about the landscape that will surround the man in the future. He thought this landscape would be different to the image that we are presented with today in science-fiction; somewhat excited, he imagined  a naturalistic environment that was artificially made from synthetic materials for reasons of hygiene and comfort. From that moment on, he was curious to try and experiment with different materials and having identified a soft, but non-deformable material, he built four square metres of rocky torrent bed, basing on a survey he made in a real torrent. He achieved an extraordinary realistic result that he was continuously surprised by after walking for a long time over the material.