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CONTEMPORARY ART IN “IL CAMPO DEI GIGANTI”

Cristiano Pallara and Daniele Papuli dialogue with the White Giants


Cristiano Pallara and Daniele Papuli are the first artists invited as part of the artistic residencies of Il Campo dei Giganti in collaboration with ZNSproject. The return to the public of the works created during the residency will be presented on Sunday, July 9 and Sunday, July 16, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Il Campo dei Giganti in Boncore (Nardò, LE).


Il Campo dei Giganti, located in the village of Boncore (agro di Nardò) close to the Salento Ionian coast, a Land Art work created in 2020 by the visionary intuition of Ulderico Tramacere, with the start of the collaboration with ZNS project, also becomes an Artistic Residency: Artists from different backgrounds and origins are invited to interact in dialogue with the Land Art work and environmental issues. Its White Giants (the centuries-old olive trees mowed down by Xylella), are the object of this artistic operation that has made them sculptural monuments of the memory of a tormented territory that does not want to remain a museum of remembrance but to become a place of identity and rebirth.


In this perspective, the collaboration with ZNS project, which is already active in the field of Art Residencies, is part of the programmatic will of the Field to create a living community place, a cultural hub that knows how to talk to the territory and leave open spaces to evolve through good practices capable of combining Art, in all its declinations and environmental urgency. The operation launched represents a challenge, for its organizers and also for the artists who, from time to time, will engage with a work in constant becoming, which already speaks for itself and still has much to say.


Cristiano Pallara and Daniele Papuli over the winter months initiated a site-specific work in progress that dialogues in tune with the Giants. Each Guest Artist symbolically received a key to access the Field as a metaphor for the gift, welcome and relational aspect that permeates the entire operation. This artistic exchange left a trace, a play of experiences and restitution that will be presented to the public in events organized for the occasion in the summer.


On Sunday, July 9, at 7 p.m., Il Campo dei Giganti hosts the work "Quel che resta" by Artist Cristiano Pallara (1976), already in residence last February in dialogue with the Field and its Giants through an exploratory Painting intervention charged with suggestions and poetic references. The gesturality of the sign shows fatigue and intimacy with the material, revealing traces, furrows and natural cavities. In this sign exploration, visions and memories as imprints immortalized in time tell ancient and new perspectives returned by a visual impact that explores details and manifests itself in the majesty of "a tree and 186 traces." For Pallara, Art is a way of life, moving from painting, his main exploratory practice with a figurativism charged with cross-cultural connections and suggestions, to Mail Art, of which he has been an active exponent of the International Circuit since 1993. The visual references from which he takes his cues are reworked with "a harsh painting, arid as sunburnt earth (G. Marziani)."


On Sunday, July 16, at 7 p.m., Il Campo dei Giganti changes clothes with "Rossoscultografia" by Daniele Papuli (1971). Already in residence in March, Papuli investigates and designs a sculptography and performance that combines vision and sonority, gesture and care, which redesigns the landscape by manifesting the lifeblood that leaves the tree in lamellar modules of pearly red paper that slips away among the millennia-old hollows, flooding the surrounding ground. This area can be circumnavigated by the public offering, depending on the viewer's point of view, optical effects given by reflections of light incident differently on each individual lamella. Papuli calls himself a sculptographer in continuous dialogue with materials, places, and space. Paper is his main medium, whose matter and sonority he explores and whose secrets he knows. He moves from sculpture, to installation, to design self-productions, appearing in the international panorama of Paper Art.


To seal the inter-artistic dialogue, composer Roberto Gagliardi returns the sound explorations woven throughout the year with the Land Art work and guest artist interventions. For Gagliardi, playing at Il Campo dei Giganti is "an invitation to dream among the white notes of a thousand-year-old score": a unique experience, guided by the energy of the Field and the emotion of the visitors. The collaboration with Silvia Civilla's TerramMare Theater will see the involvement of children from the Summer Camp "I Teatri di Torre Nova" in performance acts that dialogue with the returns.


The guest artists have been able to combine their own stylistic signature and the usual materials of their artistic production in tune with nature, in works that do not invade, nullify, or modify the surrounding environment. These are works of temporary placement, usable only on the dates indicated within the Field and in dialogue with it. The result is a new programming, which is uniquely different from similar experiences; events that become performative, enriched by the presence of the artists in interaction with the works, the surrounding space and the public, skillfully orchestrated by the host Ulderico Tramacere. The works return, in this way, the research on the meaning of a Contemporary Art intervention in respectful dialogue with the environment, with the aim of re-signifying a place, already objectified by the experimentation of a Land Art operation, expanding, if it is possible, its field of action.


Cultural and community events covering the themes of art, ecology and the environment will take place throughout the summer. Events to be accessed by reservation, subscribing to the newsletters of Il Campo dei Giganti or following the relevant social pages. All events are made under the Patronage of the Municipality of Nardò - Department of Culture and Environment - Giulia Puglia.

Public opening:

Sunday, July 9, 7 p.m., "Quel che resta" by Cristiano Pallara

Sunday, July 16, 7 p.m., "Rossoscultografia" by Daniele Papuli

Il Campo dei Giganti, via Orsini del Balzo sn, Boncore (Nardò, Lecce)



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