Land, place, and territory are the pulsating material that creates culture. The Frescobaldi family, deeply connected to one of the most ancient elements of human life – wine – is fully aware of this and clearly sees the importance of honoring its tradition. For this reason, they continue to pursue the objective underlying the Artisti per Frescobaldi project, an initiative conceived by Tiziana Frescobaldi who, since 2012, with the help of curator Ludovico Pratesi, has brought the history, culture, and essence of winemaking into dialogue with contemporary art.
Tenuta Castelgiocondo, 2025, ph. courtesy Artisti per Frescobaldi
The artists immerse themselves in one of the most characteristic Tuscan landscapes, a place where the rows of vines that produce one of Italy’s most distinctive and renowned wines, Brunello di Montalcino, meet the Maremma scrubland. This is where Castelgiocondo is located, a place that hosts the works of artists from around the world. This meeting point of perspectives is, for the seventh time, a meeting place for artists who, despite their different poetics, internalize, rework and represent the same theme in an authentic and personal way: wine and viticulture. This year, in October, two works by Giulia Cenci and Sunmin Park were inaugurated and exhibited. These two artists, with very different poetics, were born in distant contexts (Italy and Korea). They approach the same subject, each in her own way, highlighting the essence of this place steeped in history. Both creations arise from the observation of viticulture, but in completely different ways.
Giulia Cenci, “Small Flower”, 2025, ph. Nicola Gnesi, courtesy Artisti per Frescobaldi
Giulia Cenci is drawn to the structure of vine trunks. Near the vineyard, she finds some dry, dead and stacked. Not yet knowing why she keeps some of them, these will become a source of inspiration for the work she will create. The vine trunks are what remains of a plant subjected to strict rules. The rows must all be at a certain height, all the plants must be in order. Being a climbing plant, the vine curls up, growing in calculated and composed manner, yet at the same time its structure exudes an almost muscular power. This twisted and powerful nature is captured by the artist, who reinterprets it in the form of aluminum. Thus, in the work Small Flower, the vine’s form expresses its complex and multifaceted aesthetic, merging with casts of human bones, dog heads and bark, blooming and flourishing, reflecting the light of day. The plant, so articulated and “muscular,” recalls the human body, evoked by the cast of a femur inserted along the trunk, creating a hybrid that blends nature and man. The entire composition is coiled around an iron pole reminiscent of those used in vineyard rows. At the top of the composition there is a flower that seems as delicate and fragile as the plant’s dry, thin bark. In Giulia Cencia’s work, the flowering and vital pulse of the vine is expressed in poetic and evocative way.
Giulia Cenci, “Small Flower”, 2025, dettaglio, ph. Nicola Gnesi, courtesy Artisti per Frescobaldi
This theme is also a key aspect of the work of Sunmin Park, who conducts a backward investigation into the creation of wine. At the microscopic level, wine thrives with life: tiny particles invisible to the naked eye move and dance within the liquid. This is the first image the artist shows us with the audiovisual work Pale Pink Universe, drawing attention to the invisible, the life within the finished product. From this first suggestion, other shapes drawn by the artist slowly appear within the composition, creating a dialogue with those already present. Flowers bloom, leaves grow, branches sprout, everything is pulsating matter, and the life of the plant is made even more evident by a sound symphony created specifically for the work by composer Vladan Vuletic. This increases in pace until it reaches a climax, after which the forms cease to vibrate, the scene implodes in on itself, and the image represents a closed, smooth, simple object, seen from different perspectives that after a few minutes we recognize. It is the seed, the element from which everything began.
Sunmin Park, “Pale Pink Universe”, 2025, ph. Nicola Gnesi, courtesy Artisti per Frescobaldi
Along with the audiovisual installation, other elements complete the exhibition, first and foremost the artist’s voice reproduced through a speaker that activates during the video installation: a quote from the medieval poet Dino Frescobaldi (1271-1316). In addition to this historical reference to the family, one can also observe the sculpture Bouquet Giocondo S 01: a bronze that, in addition to recalling the castle through an aesthetic similar to its wall decorations and through its U-shaped base (like the floor plan of the structure), visually reproduces the process of winemaking. Next to the sculpture there is Bouquet Giocondo D 01, a drawing that combines Korean aesthetics with Western tradition and nature. All of Sunmin Park’s works stitch together the various components of the most essential aspects of winemaking and the Castelgiocondo terroir, starting from a single drop observed under a microscope. With careful and precise attention, she brings together various elements in harmonious dialogue, creating a profound and poetic synthesis through sound, video, sculpture, and drawing.
Sunmin Park, “Bouquet Giocondo S 01”, 2025, ph. Nicola Gnesi, courtesy Artisti per Frescobaldi
Art is a matter of perspectives. Artists see things differently and for seven editions, each artist has looked at the same place differently: some have reflected on centuries-old tradition and family customs, others have explored the stages of winemaking, or even focused on the wild plants growing along the edges of the vineyard. Viticulture has been symbolized through mythical tales or brought closer to us through the unseen, like dried grape stalks: what is considered waste, through art, binds us even more to tradition and the past, both personal and shared. The work is the result of the interplay of gazes between the artist and the collectors, and in the Artisti per Frescobaldi project, this connection creates a virtuous bond between present and past, reflecting on the future and honoring the territory.
Samuel Tonelli
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Always connected to the art world, Samuel Tonelli attended the course in Art Education and Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and furthered his studies with the two-year master’s program in Education and Cultural Mediation of Artistic Heritage. After gaining experience mediating in various exhibitions and teaching art history at the art high school in Bologna, he developed a passion for art writing, which he sees as a powerful means of expression capable of opening up visions, broadening horizons and enriching the understanding of diverse perspectives on reality.
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