On the eastern coast of Sicily, at the foot of Mount Etna, extends the Radice Pura Botanical Park, with its three thousand plant species, for a total of seven thousand varieties that are the result of over fifty years of work by the Faro family in the floriculture sector. It is not just an immense garden: it is a testimony, a living archive of plants, shrubs, aromas, essences, flowers and colors. But it is, above all, the place where the Radice Pura Garden Festival takes place every two years, namely the first Biennale dedicated to the Mediterranean landscape. The 2025 edition of the Festival has recently been inaugurated, titled “Chaos (and) order in the garden”, which aims to enhance the dual essence of Nature in its simultaneous expression of wild creativity and a dimension of slow growth, in a silent and imaginary dialogue. These are gardens with minimal forms that reflect respect for the environment and provide a framework for the other soul of the Garden Festival, projected towards contemporary art.
Francesco Lauretta, “Birthday party”, oil on canvas, 2024, courtesy of the artist and the Radice Pura Foundation
Numerous are the contributions of artists who have worked in the park, such as Emilio Isgrò, Federico Baronello, Alfio Bonanno, Adrian Paci, Renato Leotta and Francesco Lauretta, the flagship artist of this edition with the exhibition “Rituals”, inaugurated on the occasion of the Garden Festival opening. Lauretta, born in 1964, was born in Ispica but lives in Florence. His production ranges from painting, to drawing, to sculpture, to multimedia installations, often using heterogeneous and recycled materials. After training at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts with Emilio Vedova and a thesis on James Lee Byars, he moved to Turin, where he began exhibiting monumental works, white sculptures: narrative, olfactory, with green soap petals or black rose petals. His artistic research is very close to the concept of garden as a metaphor for change and cannot be pigeonholed into a single discipline. His pictorial style has the temper and tenacity of a succulent plant, but also the colored and succulent robustness of Echeveria, a plant belonging to the Crassulaceae family, but also the name of one of his works exhibited at the Radice Pura palmento.
Francesco Lauretta, “Farmers”, oil on canvas, 2024, courtesy of the artist and the Radice Pura Foundation
“Rituals” does not want to be identified only as an exhibition: it is an action, almost performative, with the sounds of musician Livio Lombardo, aka Saint Huck, and is the result of his artist residency at the Radice Pura Foundation. The palmento space has been filled with an enormous quantity of confetti to walk through and move along the path. It is an itinerary of large pictorial paintings that recall a party, a dance of silhouettes that seem like ghosts and then a landscape of wide and dark roofs. A painting of succulent and thorny plants also stands out, with a narrative approach. They are all suspended and colorful paintings. Yellow is the predominant color, almost to emphasize a striking restlessness towards existence and would also seem a subtle connecting line with Gauguin. Some works have a squared and minimal support that elevates them. A strong vertical dimension is perceived that shifts the concavity of the palmento basins towards these large pictorial canvases, positioned in a raised manner, with the typical festive, colorful, gaudy and swaying decorations that hang from the paintings as bizarre symbols of contemporary paganism. As Lauretta explains, «entering the Radicepura space is like taking a journey that evokes ancient and contemporary, individual and collective, pagan and divine rituals, it’s like seeking a new unifying force. The theme of ritual, that is what makes us sing and dance, laugh and cry, dwell and transcend, tells a part of our humanity. Layers of time are displayed that strengthen our presence in the present».
Francesco Lauretta, “Rituals”, installation view, ph. Alfio Garozzo – Palmento, courtesy and the Radice Pura Foundation
Added to the works on display there is also the loan of the work “Gattoparve”, from the Crédit Agricole Italia Collections. Lauretta emphasized that the evanescent scene depicted in this old canvas of his is taken from the famous ball scene in Visconti’s film. It is no coincidence, in fact, that the dancing figures are all sketched «with all the characters hinted at, like ghosts, recalling the Sicilian aristocracy that was going to ruin». The silhouettes do not have sharp contours and the colors are nuanced to give an idea of a vaporous scene, that is, another elusive apparition like time. Therefore, the idea of cyclicity emerges which, guarded by time, in “Rituals” becomes memory and ceremony. This title of anthropological and social derivation indicates an order that revolves around real things, becomes color, becoming that line that crosses many of Lauretta’s paintings. In “Rituals” there is the metaphorical clock of life, which is rhythmic, and for this reason the artist has compared his exhibition to a carousel that the public is invited to board. Lauretta’s is a thaumaturgic art connected to the rhythms of existence, an evocative and healing dance, light and elusive that moves and shifts the ether like confetti.
Info:
Rituals by Francesco Lauretta as part of Radice Pura Garden Festival
17/05/2025 – 7712/2025
Strada 17, n’19
Leonardello – Giarre (CT)
www.radicepurafestival.com
Through art she feels the need to get closer to nature, deciding to create an artistic residence on Etna as a “refuge for contemporary art” for artists and scholars. Thus was born Nake artistic residence. She won the Responsible Etna Award 2015. In 2017, she was invited to the Sala Zuccari, Senate of the Republic, as an art critic. She writes for Italian and foreign artists. Curator of the first Museum of Contemporary Art of Etna and of the “Contemporary Etna” project.
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