The past is immutable. Pierluigi Slis opposes this assumption in the cycle Fragile Lands, intervening on his first pictorial production and modifying with sharp gestures the canvases that told the places of his interiority. Acting with scissors, cutters, blades, rulers, compasses, Slis cuts pictorial fragments of his past that turn into flashes of color, drawn on canvas in dense and homogeneous fields.
The artist, at the beginning of the experimentation of Fragile Lands gives a new point of view on the world, tracing lines of force and new borders.
They are operations that do not destroy what has been, but revisit it analytically, according to established and punctual procedures. The work process allows Slis to recover, safeguard, question and value a precious heritage of elements that, isolated, acquire new life and freedom.
The Fragile Lands are dwellings of Poetry.
PIERLUIGI SLIS
Pierluigi Slis (Wuppertal, 1974) lives and works in Revine Lake.
His research explores themes related to the psychological and social processes that permeate human existence and action. Using tools such as painting, environmental composition, social action or video, the artist gives life to open or ephemeral works, characterized by a certain intolerance towards norms, aesthetics and formalisms. The aim is to evoke an emotional resonance, a question mark that invites the individual to rediscover self-awareness.
Some of his most important works have been exhibited and produced for major public institutions, including the gardens of the Royal Palace of Venaria Reale, New York University, the European Parliament in Brussels, and on the occasion of international events such as the 54th Biennale d’Arte in Venice, the Festival Comodamente in Vittorio Veneto, the Verona Reload and the Gaenge Viertel in Hamburg.
The exhibition Fragile Lands is a return to the city of Verona: in 2011 Slis created Zoll/1 as part of Verona Reload, an environmental installation realized in the former unloading yard at the railway warehouse of Porto San Pancrazio, temporarily converted into an agricultural route. The work is reminiscent of ploughing the earth and has been carried out with the minimum environmental impact, trying to recover and convert all the residual energy of the place. A square as border, as customs between the before and the after. Among the most recent works are Behind the land in Villafranca di Verona and Daddyshake for the Bolzano Art Week in 2023.