In – finito – Elena Bellantoni, Fabio Perino, Eleonora Roaro

On the occasion of the 18th Contemporary Day, dedicated this year to ecology and sustainability, the Italian Cultural Institute of Madrid presents IN — FINITO. The exhibition, created in collaboration with Recontemporary, the first institution in Italy dedicated to video art and new media, aims to highlight the complex relationship between humanity and nature thanks to the work of three Italian artists: Elena Bellantoni, Fabio Perino and Eleonora Roaro.

Three artists. Three different points of view. Water as a common denominator: a place where the confrontation between humanity and its actions takes place. The sea, always a symbol of change, a shaping material that creates and destroys, here becomes the means for the diffusion of a broader message, an ambassador of denunciation and desire for change. Elena Bellantoni uses the waters of Tricase (Puglia) as a clear canvas, a space on which to compose a message. “Corpo Morto” is a performative act, a reference to the imminent rise of the seas and to lost bodies: water that welcomes and submerges. The same nature that becomes a creation of humanity in the works “Filling the Sea and empting the Sea” by Fabio Perino. The works see the artist intent on the action of filling and emptying the sea, a senseless and surreal gesture that represents the inconsistency that binds human beings.

Omnipotence, selfishness and short-sightedness, typical characteristics of today’s society, are contrasted with man’s innate predisposition to want to improve himself: the precarious balance in which society is forced to live. The Great Salt Lake of Utah, immortalized in the work “Vanishing Point” by Eleonora Roaro, represents one of the extreme consequences of humanity: desertification. In a place where a few miles from the Spiral Jetty they tried to extract oil for years, the water slowly gives way to sand. The pink of the landscape caused by the salt and the artist who walks, mark not only the rhythm of time, but also of the process in progress: nature that persists incessantly in its course. A selection aimed at making us reflect on the topicality of the problems but also on the persistence of nature.