Enrico Castellani - COLLEZIONE GORI

Even before arriving at Celle, Enrico Castellani was known for his exploration of space, represented within the Collection by his work titled Surface. In defining his approach to Celle in 1987, the artist has written, “If Giuliano Gori had said to me: take a corner of the park atCelle and make me a sculpture, I frankly wouldn’t have known where to begin. Instead, he said: here’s a room, make me an ‘environment’… I looked for a way to use both of the possibilities that the Fattoria di Celle offered me. I used the room as the site for an event which, serving as a pretext, involves the exterior space as well. To work as a valid pretext, the event had to be intrinsic to its location because the spatial concept was the key element in creating a possible dialectical relationship between a closed room and an open space.” Thus, Castellani became one of only two artists who conceived works both inside the fattoria building and in the park.

Through the choice of the title, the artist encapsulated in a single term a legally codified relationship that would become his ethical framework for dealing with the identified sites. Indeed, the term enfiteusi invokes a specific protected space—the property—and the right that allows the user-artist the same degree of enjoyment as the owner-client, with the additional obligation to enhance it.

“Thus I had the idea to highlight several structural elements in the room that seemed to me to be anomalous. I blocked off two diagonally-opposing corners of the room be means of mirrors, triangular in shape from ceiling to floor and vice versa… Transposing these same elements outside I then obtained a structure which reproduces the room’s dimensions. The mirroring parts of the inside room preserve an objective image of the space while outside they reflect the grass where the floor used to be and the sky and oak boughs where the ceiling had been….” —Enrico Castellani inGori Collection: Site Specific Art at the Fattoria di Celle, ed. Gli Ori, Pistoia, 2009, p86.

Works by the artist

Enfiteusi I

Enfiteusi II

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