ăquae. Just ăquae. A single, “vital” element characterizes a new exhibition experience as part of the long artistic research by Roberto Ghezzi (Cortona, 1978). Twenty years of work in close contact with Nature. A hereditary bond, received as a legacy from a family branch, desired first and sought then, with the same passion and persistence for artistic practice, where art and life come to coincide within a magic circle.
A relationship between man/artist and Nature, of progressive convergence, to carefully observe the evolution of a quest in which different moments are distinguished from each other, defining the infinitely complex in relation to the infinitely simple and the infinitely large to the infinitely small.
After a long period of landscape painting, in fact, the artist decided to tread lesser-known pathways to undertake a new and profound search for ‘authenticity’ That ‘authenticity’ which in the history of Western art has often coincided with the concept of mimesis, which in Roberto Ghezzi’s research is expressed by the triad: Truth-Knowledge-Action always “with,” “through,” “in,” nature.
Ghezzi in essence overcomes the real mimetic capacity of painting by acting on a subtle and discreet line in which the very role of the artist is questioned and re-profiled. It is no longer seen as a demiurge, as a solitary and sometimes egotistical genius, but as the creator of a “collective” process of which the artist is an active, decisive, part, but not the one and only.
This means taking a step back, which is actually a step forward, with respect to the idea of the artist/protagonist. It means returning a central role to nature through an artistic process that is both spontaneous and guided at the same time.
In the works of Ghezzi, nature is presented very simply. There is no medium because nature does not represent itself; it is capable of conveying its own message beautifully.
It is from this extremely poetic declaration of self-reliance that Naturografie© were born: works that see the light when the artist hands over the blank space of the canvas to natural action. The artist like an architect, is the creator of a process, deciding both the most favourable conditions for creation to begin and those in which it should end. With these works, the unfolding of nature is confronted with the changing nature of the materials, the place and the time chosen by the artist for creation.
In the context of contemporary art, we could therefore say that we are faced with a very pure form of site-specific art, one of those terms, often devoid of meaning by contemporary critics, to refer to an intervention that is thought out and fits into a specific place. The works of Ghezzi are the product of the interaction between “amphibious” canvases (installations between land, water and air) and the natural environment. “Depending on the landscape I encounter I choose different types of fabrics, supports, modify the formulas of the reagents (the natural preparations with which I treat the canvases to trigger the process) and the timing.” the artist states. Nature has its own ever-changing times to heal itself.
From the first installations closest to the places known since childhood, then, the Apennines, the Alps, lagoons, lakes, seas and finally the world, the artist’s canvases welcome, each time, a new challenge. They insert themselves into a different environment with an unchanged desire for exchange and for dialogue. From peat bogs, to forests, waterfalls, deserts and glaciers in a crosscutting research that has embraced, little by little, broader and more ambitious areas, from art to science, to environmental sustainability, to education and disclosure.
Naturografie ăquae is thus an evolutionary stage. A fundamental episode that opens a gateway to the great potential that from within a work of art opens up to the eyes of scientists and, above all, to those of spectators who, called to see something they think they know, realize they do not know it at all: the “hidden” world that dwells within the canvas. An “other reality” unreachable to the naked eye, which only a microscope can make visible. If it is not vital for us to know, one by one, the organisms living inside the canvases, what is important is to know of their existence, it is to perceive their presence, to think of the possibility, only seemingly remote, of a different reality. What if a work could be a space-time gateway, that artifice of fantastic-adventurous fiction that allows the immediate movement of characters between two sites distant from each other in space, time or other realities? Artwork, then, as a “portal to another world”, a gateway, a passage to another dimension. A perceptual multiverse, one would say, created by a visual gap between what we perceive with our senses and what we see if we zoom into another dimension, as in an abstract landscape. A projection of the spectator into a micro-world where known parameters are unhinged and where through the use of an artificial medium, such as the microscope, it is possible to access an unprecedented and usually inaccessible beauty. The reality that surrounds us is complex and full of mystery. The art that amazingly contains it all is simple and straightforward without our realizing it.

Art, the real one, “contains” without any effort, without constraints, and this is possible only by going along with a flow of which Roberto Ghezzi makes himself an accomplice and ally by constantly changing his position in space – numerous artistic residencies in Italy, and in remote places on the planet such as Alaska, Iceland, South Africa, Norway, Tunisia, Patagonia and Greenland – allowing the places travelled and experienced – parks, nature reserves… – to leave a trace of themselves, for once, instead of man’s. Ghezzi has long since given the common name Naturografie© to these traces, by nature so dissimilar to each other.

Nature is thus presented for what it is, without superstructure as the protagonist of an autobiographical tale, these days, increasingly rare because, for better or worse, it veers toward anthropocentric tones. The recently published text, Islands of Abandonment. Life in the Post-Human Landscape, is a clear example of this: author Cal Flyn traces her personal topography of the most devastated places on the planet, reminding us that where humanity disappears, nature thrives because “life gradually regains its dominion over things, showing us on the one hand the transience of man’s impact on Earth and on the other hand the hope of nature regaining possession of what has been taken from her.”
Roberto Ghezzi’s topography of the places where he sets his canvases, always on the border between air and land or air and water, leads to little travelled paths, often impervious, difficult to reach or, as in the case of Naturografie ăquae off the waters of the Venetian lagoon.
The project designed for Venice, Naturografie ăquae, stems from the desire to investigate the Lagoon in all its aspects, and intervene both in the most urbanized areas such as the Arsenal, and in more natural areas such as the WWF Valle Averto Oasis or in re-naturalized areas such as the sandbanks south of Venice. Again following the concept followed by Ghezzi’s research, several partners were involved in the Naturografie ăquae project as well, such as WWF, Port System Authority of the Northern Adriatic Sea of Venice and especially CNR ISMAR and IOM.
The artist gave the CNR ISMAR and IOM researchers samples of the canvases when they were taken so that they could study their naturalistic characteristics and in particular how the ecosystem of the real environments reacts with the various types of fabric.
In fact, Naturografie can also be perceived from the researcher’s perspective as matrices of data collection and potential sources of information about the characteristics of the environments that contributed to their creation, and the timing of canvas degradation. IOM also took macro electronic microscope photographs of the canvases taken and installed in the different natural environments where they remained from two to six months, during ‘21 and ‘22.
We thus move away from the usual image of the artist locked in his studio, to visualize another image of an artist who traverses the very matter of his art, merges and blends with it without ever superimposing himself.
Approaching the place of study corresponds in parallel to distancing oneself from it. A step back to take one step forward. Roberto Ghezzi becomes an activator of processes, a mediator of the unexpected.
A hypersensitive artistic practice which processes physical and sensory data with a disarming “naturalness.” The confidential relationship that the artist has with the environments he knows and crosses reflects the degree of depth of his research always in tension and listening to a double dimension: internal and external. With an in-progress approach that brings him ever closer to scientific fields, Ghezzi’s “living works” register new glances and perspectives as infinite as those found in nature.
A procedural art in all respects where the mere display of the final result, although aided, on some occasions, by graphic designs, does not always succeed in conveying the path that accompanies the creation of the works, which always involve a careful analysis of the places, “Come to think of it, the best moment (conceptually and aesthetically) of a Naturography^© is always the one immediately preceding its collection, when it is still all bustling.. more or less macroscopic… “If I had to correctly indicate the technique by which my works are made, I could also say ‘organic matter on canvas‘, since the preparations I use to catalyse life on the fabric always trigger – in contact with the ‘place’ – a small spark from which the rest then follows,” the artist states.
That “rest” also includes the temporal dimension, a primary component both in terms of the work’s elaboration, which often takes a long time, and from the point of view of its “destiny,” which, given its perishability, does not set durability as its primary goal.
Even the ăquae of the lagoon, protagonists at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi have gone through the stages of a process and it is as if they were looking at themselves in the mirror but the image reflects a reality that lies beneath the surface of things. We are light years away from representation: aesthetics gives way to concept.
In this exhibition curated by START Cultura and the EContemporary gallery, in collaboration with CNR ISMAR, CNR IOM, WWF Italy, the Port System Authority of the Northern Adriatic Sea and Fondaco dei Tedeschi – Ghezzi brings for the first time to the exhibition a never-before-seen dialogue between a selection of his large works on canvas and microscopic images of the canvases themselves.
The large canvases we see descending from the ceiling, like tapestries from a distant time, are made of the same substance as the Lagoon, as it presents itself to us, today. Seemingly pregnant with matter and yet light and delicate, they are displayed in their unstable balance.
Other canvases, on the other hand, smaller in size but of the same “strength” emphasize the details of the essence of the “ăquae” known through the project and specifically those of the Northern part of the Adriatic Sea thus connecting to the Naturografie © of the beginnings of the research: in which Nature expressed the essence of the Eastern part of its coasts.
The world inside the canvases of Roberto Ghezzi moves even standing still, we think we know it, but in fact we have never seen it, a “new world” that art and science together reveal to us.