The Castelfiorentino municipality chose sculptor Davide Dall’Osso as an interpreter of modern times for the 2019 art and culture season. His exhibition spread throughout the town, Lo spazio per essere/The Space to Be, reinterpreted the streets and walls of the city, transforming them into the pages of a diary. In this diary, the words are his sculptures that narrate (for whoever wants to “read” them) our nomadic/migratory nature, observing and revealing what is the very essence of human beings.
To be able to visit this installation, people have to “take a journey,” following paths changed from their normal daily function by the works of Dall’Osso. In the artist’s vision, this alteration of the very same streets used by locals on a daily basis leads to a greater awareness of change, of the diversity inherent in every human being.
The Castelfiorentino installation tells of the journey that man makes in search of his own identity. This journey leads him across lands, to interact with different people and different cultures, until he finds the place he belongs, where he can become and be himself.
The artist, who received his education at the Paolo Grassi theater school, sees his installations as dramaturgies, with a prologue, an epilogue and a hoped-for catharsis.
“…in Castelfiorentino, to give strength to the sense of the journey that man completes through his existence, the beginning of the installation will be horses…”
For Dall’Orso, the horse is a symbol of the will-power, determination, and tenacity of mankind. For centuries we have traveled, discovered, exchanged, and conquered alongside horses. Horses are a symbol of our culture and our history. The horse has marked the path of man. Today, things are different and yet when we see a horse we instinctively stop, get closer, and attempt to make a connection. A special feeling exists between humans and horses. Human memory has been shown to be transmitted through genes. We have within ourselves attitudes, behaviors and feelings that belonged to our ancestors; and therefore we carry inside us a knowledge, kinship, and respect for horses… horses that allowed us to be what we are, a humanity of diversity.
The project The Space to Be touches on a human theme that has always, but especially recently, been the subject of heated arguments on diversity and the acceptance of diversity in all its manifestations.
The exhibition was installed throughout the spaces of the Teatro del Popolo the Bego Museum and other public areas. It aims to overcome old preconceptions so that we can live in a tomorrow made up of acceptance of the “other,” overcoming any kind of difference.
This installation has large Western, Asian and African faces, and transparent polycarbonate figures, a real soul army, each with its diversity, expression of a psychological state predisposed to the search for an empathetic connection with the world around them. The works almost seem to be consumed in the strenuous attempt to find a channel of communication with the outside world and are placed there, in front of the observer, entangled in a sort of circuit made up of nullification and regeneration.
widespread exhibition in Castelfiorentino (FI), 2019
