This time Palermo is the centre of Planeta’s latest project for Art and Territory. Two parallel projects are born from the partnership with the Merz Foundation and the ‘Radiceterna’ association which will be Planeta’s concrete contribution to the calendar of events which are enlivening the city. A homage to the city which will be the Italian Capital of Culture for 2018.
The first project is ‘Radiceterna’, an idea of Valentina Bruschi, Ignazio Mortellaro and Eveline Wüthrich, together with Planeta and the Merz Foundation, and forming part of the programme of collateral events of the biennial exhibition of contemporary European art Manifesta 12.
The scene of this enterprise is a place particularly close to Planeta; the Botanic Garden of Palermo University. A permanent library based in the calidarium of the Garden will be presented to the city, with a basis of important books devoted mainly to landscape and contemporary art, and with a small exhibition space where four exhibitions have already been planned for 2018.
‘Radiceterna’ will be inaugurated on 19th May with an exhibition by the Puerto Rican artists Allora and Calzadilla and the exhibition of one of the most representative of Merz’s works, ‘Se la forma scompare la sua radice è eterna’ (1984) in front of the calidarium.
‘‘Se la forma scompare la sua radice è eterna’ by Mario Merz, inspired by the Persian poet Gialal al-Din Rumi’, says Silvano Bertalot of the Merz Foundation, ‘finds an ideal dimension here, placing it in a place of historic heritage suggests a vivid reflection on the continual transformation of the cosmos. In this continuing change, living beings and elements of growth inspire a comparison with their roots, with their foundations which are eternal and immortal elements of the world’.
This work at once struck the Planeta family:
‘It seemed to us’, explained Alessio, Francesca and Santi Planeta, ‘the perfect synthesis of what we aspire to achieve every day, with our work in agriculture, on the land and with wine’. From this arose the second project: ‘We decided, together with the Merz Foundation, to produce a special bottle, which will reproduce on the label the work of this artist from Turin. We are proud and honoured to link one of our wines to the memory of Mario Merz; to be consistent with the cultural and ideological legacy of the Torinese artist it will not be a particularly expensive bottle, though it will be produced in a very limited quantity’.
The first appointment will be 19th May in Palermo, but others will follow. The fourth edition of the Sciaranuova Festival, at Planeta’s Teatro in Vigna on Etna, has already been planned for the last two weeks of July. At the end of August it will instead be the vines of Noto to host the third edition of Planeta Santa Cecilia in Musica, with the valued contribution of Maestro Giovanni Bietti. In September the beginning of the harvest could also coincide with the eighth edition of our first project in contemporary art, curated by Valentina Bruschi, the itinerant artists’ residence ‘Viaggio in Sicilia’.
