Background
Piero Gilardi was born on August 3, 1942, in Turin, Piemonte, Italy from a Swiss family. His mother was a painter and model Cecilia Lavelli.
Accademia Albertina in Turin
Piero Gilardi was born on August 3, 1942, in Turin, Piemonte, Italy from a Swiss family. His mother was a painter and model Cecilia Lavelli.
Piero studied at the Accademia Albertina in Turin.
In 1963 Piero Gilardi held his first one-man show, entitled "Machines for the future." Two years later he created his first pieces in polyurethane foam and exhibited them in Paris, Brussels, Cologne, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and New York. As from 1968, Piero stopped producing regular artworks to engage in the new artistic trends of the late ’60s Arte Povera, Land Art, and Antiform Art. He also took part in setting up the first two international exhibitions of the new trends at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and at the Bern Kunsthalle.
In 1969 Gilardi started a long trans-cultural experience to conceptually analyze and practise the “Art/Life” combination. As political activist and animator of youth culture, he organized several experiences of collective creativity in urban and “world” fringes, such as Nicaragua, Indian Reserves in the USA and Africa.
In 1981 he resumed his activity in the art world an exhibited installations, accompanied by creative public workshops. In two years Piero Gilardi started an artistic research project with new technologies with the elaboration of the IXIANA project, which was presented at the Parc de la Villette in Paris. That work consisted of a technological park in which the public could artistically experiment with digital technologies.
During the ’90s Piero developed a series of multimedia interactive installations with an intense international activity. Along with Claude Faure and Piotr Kowalski, he formed the International Association Ars Technica. Moreover, he presides over the international association “Ars Technica” which has promoted two Arslab exhibitions of neo-technological art in Turin ("Arslab. Metodi ed Emozioni" in 1992, "Arslab, I Sensi del Virtuale" in 1995, and "Arslab. I labirinti del corpo in gioco" in 1999).
Piero Gilardi has also published two books of theoretical reflection about his varied forms of research: "From art to life, from life to art", La Salamandra, Milano 1981, and "Not for Sale", Mazzotta, Milano 2000 and Les Presses du reel, Dijon 2003. He writes articles for a number of different art magazines such as Juliet and Flash Art.
Gilardi had promoted the project of PAV – Parco Arte Vivente (Living Art Park opened in 2008 in Turin) which will contain a compendium of all his experiences concerning the relationship between Nature and Culture. He currently lives and works in Turin.
Piero Gilardi is highly praised for the contribution to the birth of Arte Povera. He gained fame with the "Nature Carpets" in 1965: these are works made of polyurethane, which reproduce in a very realistic style and fragments of the natural environment for recreational purposes, but also to report to a style of life which becomes more and more artificial with the passage of time.
From 1968 and for all the seventies to his artistic activity is accompanied by the formation of political activism in the so-called New Left.
While trying to comprehend the cybernetic idea of feedback and the scientific rational behind man's mental synthesis, Piero's perspective on reality changed; he focused on the Fluxus and relationship of things around him. Pietro Gilardi can be defined as a technoscientific artist, that is, the artist who tries to integrate his research with technological innovation and scientific research.
Quotations:
"Art can not be consolatory, but must be an element of people's lives, a life that today new technologies are changing profoundly day by day."
"If I have to say what my roots are, I see them in the popular theater and in the Baroque theater."
Along with Claude Faure and Piotr Kowalski, Piero formed the International Association "Ars Technica." He is currently a member of the Artistic Direction of the project "Park of Living Art."
