Public art by Vittorio Corsini

In contemporary society, public art no longer seems to arouse the interest it once did, with few exceptions. Cities are littered with monumental works, but people pass by them without dwelling on them. Is this a problem related to carelessness and a hectic lifestyle, or is it the nature of the works that fail to capture our attention? In some cases, a work may convey an uncomfortable memory that we prefer to ignore or even censor. The issue of public art is complex and multifaceted. Vittorio Corsini (Cecina,1956. Lives and works in Milan) proposes an approach that immerses people and communities into the work itself, making them participants and recognizing them as an integral part of the work.

Vittorio Corsini intervistato da Pietro Coppi, foto di Andrea Fais

Vittorio Corsini intervistato da Pietro Coppi, foto di Andrea Fais

The artist, a professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, counts among his solo exhibitions those held at MACRO in Rome, at Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, and his most important project, entitled Ospite Ospitante (Guest Host), created at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice in 2023 in the San Marino pavilion. His creations are not extraneous elements to the urban context, but they dialogue with those who live in the places where they are installed. For Corsini, in fact, the work always comes from the individuals who inhabit the public space, who can find themselves, reflect and recognize themselves in it. Public art, then, becomes a sign: something to be interpreted, capable of suggesting new perspectives of confrontation among the inhabitants. Examples like Corsini’s show a different way, one that defies individualism and instead focuses on collectivity.

Vittorio Corsini, “Lo sguardo di Peccioli”, 2017, stampa su legno, 530 x 3500 cm, courtesy dell’artista

Vittorio Corsini, “Lo sguardo di Peccioli”, 2017, stampa su legno, 530 x 3500 cm, courtesy dell’artista

Pietro Coppi: In preparing this interview, I thought I would focus mainly on your public interventions, analyzing the function they have within the places in which they are placed, but also reflecting on the value that public art has today. Can we still talk about a monument? What function do your works have as they become public?
Vittorio Corsini: Many people say that works, when they are born, are always public, whether they are in a private house or in a street. However, there are core differences. For my way of working, the public work arises in the place where it will be placed and in relation to it, in close contact with issues, gazes and people. Everything that contributes to that place, so the air, the people, the architecture, the landscape, the wind, and so on becomes part of the work. This is what generally happens in my creative process: first I enter into a relationship with something, trying to understand what happens in that place to the people who live there. They are actually the ones who give soul to a place, depending on how they experience it and how they move around in it. So the work of public art cannot be monumental because of its conceptual value, that is, of taking meaning by exploiting, drawing on and taking root in the place where it is placed. The monument, on the other hand, remains as it is wherever you move it.

Vittorio Corsini, “Le parole scaldano”, 2004, vetro, inox, acqua, Quarrata, Pistoia, courtesy dell’artista

Vittorio Corsini, “Le parole scaldano”, 2004, vetro, inox, acqua, Quarrata, Pistoia, courtesy dell’artista

I was thinking of focusing the second question on your involvement in the community that is going to host your work. I traced this dynamic in your practice, there is always a conscious “self” that is introduced within a “we,” a community. I think of the work Lo sguardo di Peccioli, which you exhibited in New York, but also of Le parole scaldano in Pistoia, where, effectively the public artwork becomes the heritage of the community and the people in it.
Lo sguardo di Peccioli and Le parole scaldano, but also one of my most recent works, Welcome to the City are expressions of different participatory modes. The latter is composed of three videos, projected on three screens measuring six meters each, showing young people who welcome by dancing those who arrive in Peccioli by car. They are the local youth, so it is a real welcome. Lo sguardo di Peccioli, on the other hand, is a foundational community work because people recognize themselves in it: it is a photo of the eyes of all the town’s inhabitants, placed on an old wall overlooking the valley. It is clear that this kind of work takes on such value only in a small village, while in a city it would take on another meaning. In fact, in New York, it changes its meaning, it acquires a different dimension, it becomes an outing, an outpost. The other one you mentioned, Le parole scaldano, located in Pistoia, involved people in a different way. I made a fountain by first asking citizens what they would like to write on it, because it is inevitable that a public work also becomes a kind of lightning rod, a receptor of discontents, of assumptions, of everything that goes through the heads of the people who live there. Young people especially feel like expressing their dissent, their disagreements or their hopes. So I arranged boxes around, where everyone could write their thoughts anonymously, which were then placed on the fountain. It is a kind of glass house, through which one can enter the mind of the Quarrata community.

Vittorio Corsini, “Benvenuti in città”, 2023, courtesy dell’artista

Vittorio Corsini, “Benvenuti in città”, 2023, courtesy dell’artista

You have always emphasized the value of the handwriting of messages, trying to keep it as unchanged as possible in the phrases written by citizens that have been placed on the fountain.
This is another thing that always makes me very curious. I am interested in the relationship between the public and the private understood as an autonomous entity, with desires, drives, frustrations and all the other components that characterize the individual. Handwriting is a very important trait of the singularity of the person, so in Quarrata, it remained exactly that of the people who wrote. Making people’s handwriting public through environmental sculptures consequently also makes their existence, insights and intimacy public. It is like divulging a person’s fingertip: it is an identifying trait.

Vittorio Corsini, “Né dentro né fuori”, 2023, ferro verniciato, 800 x 400 x 25 cm, courtesy Galleria ME Vannnucci, Pistoia

Vittorio Corsini, “Né dentro né fuori”, 2023, ferro verniciato, 800 x 400 x 25 cm, courtesy Galleria ME Vannnucci, Pistoia

We could say that your art is private art in a public space. I think of the work Meno270, where the boundaries of the house slowly blur, like the boundaries between public and private.
My big desire is to open up the house. Many of my sculptures took the form of open houses where the walls disappear or open up like a box. The basic idea is not to decree the demarcation between the inside and the outside, but to imagine that both are usable, soft and liquid realms. Hence comes thinking of the home not as a place of confinement, but as a place where situations are refined and comparisons are born. This margin, this wall, that divides public and private is not only mobile, but very useable. This border is what I have tried to highlight, through signs put on the ground. I did it this way, for example, in Meno270, where the conformation of the house on the upper floor was reproduced in the lower floor of the gallery. I was interested in the audience blending those black lines, which were also the boundaries, the walls.

Vittorio Corsini, “Ospite ospitante”, 2023, Padiglione San Marino, XVIII Mostra Internazionale di Architettura di Venezia, foto di Silvio Salvador, courtesy dell’artista

Vittorio Corsini, “Ospite ospitante”, 2023, Padiglione San Marino, XVIII Mostra Internazionale di Architettura di Venezia, foto di Silvio Salvador, courtesy dell’artista

Thank you, I think it’s useful the talk about public artwork today, as we often talk about monuments and the removal of some of them.
Public artwork is essential. Where there is a lack of public artwork, there is a lack of civility. The suburbs of big cities are, in a sense, abandoned by signs. A public artwork is always a sign. Even when it is vandalized, it is because it is recognized as such. It has its own importance. Where these signs are missing, society is missing. It is the signs in the public sphere that make it clear that we belong to a society; their absence turns spaces into muddy puddles where anything becomes possible and where we do not recognize ourselves. Signs are in the midst of people, they are right in the physical space of two bodies. Public sculptures are signs that invite ethical behavior, they are presences that act beyond our ability to interpret them, they are pillars of our tim.

Pietro Coppi

Info:

www.vittoriocorsini.com


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