Since April 25, 2026, OCA - Oasy Contemporary Art and Architecture has returned to welcome the public to thePistoia Apennines, in San Marcello Piteglio (Pistoia). Created with the aim of creating a path between nature and contemporary art, the Oasi Dynamo project offers an itinerary between works by international artists set in the landscape and an exhibition space reserved for art and photography exhibitions. Under the artistic direction of Emanuele Montibeller, OCA has evolved progressively over the past three years, offering an experience in which works and landscape establish a constant dialogue with woods, glades and ridges, transforming nature into an active and participatory presence. In this ever-changing context, the permanent path within the oasis aims to configure itself as a coherent curatorial project, in which each intervention arises from direct confrontation with the place and modifies its perception.
For the 2026 season, OCA hosts the Belgian artist Arne Quinze, who brings to Oasi Dynamo the work Ceramorphia, thus enriching the path immersed in nature, together with the solo exhibition I’m a Gardener, set up in the exhibition space and dedicated to his research on the relationship between man and biodiversity. The installation Ceramorphia, already exhibited at the 2024 Venice Biennale, aims to establish an intense confrontation with the landscape of the Pistoia Apennines. The work is proposed as a tool for reflection, capable of creating an osmotic relationship with the surrounding environment, without imposing itself or adapting passively to the context. The ceramic forms recall a kind of “alternative nature”: not a copy of the natural world, but a reinterpretation of it. Stems, shoots and spontaneous developments are crossed by an intentionality that modifies their original logic. Ceramorphia does not depict nature, but represents its transformation through human intervention and gaze, inviting reflection on the contemporary condition, in which humans profoundly influence natural systems while feeling increasingly distant from them.
In parallel, the solo exhibition I’m a Gardener, hosted in OCA’s exhibition spaces, features a selection of paintings and works on canvas dedicated to the relationship between human beings and nature. The pictorial surfaces, characterized by strong chromatic tensions and dynamic superimpositions, do not describe the landscape realistically, but evoke its vital energy made up of growth, transformation and collisions. Painting and installation thus become different expressions of the same creative core: a search for the generative force of life and the need to restore balance and biodiversity in environments inhabited by humans.
An internationally recognized artist, Quinze has built over the years a coherent research dedicated to the relationship between nature and urbanized space. After his beginnings in the Graffiti Art scene of the 1980s, his path has developed through large public installations and pictorial cycles presented in museums and international contexts. At the center of his practice is the wildflower garden that surrounds his studio in Belgium, observed for more than 30 years as an autonomous ecosystem. From this direct experience of biodiversity comes research that finds in OCA an ideal place for confrontation with the natural landscape. The exhibition I’m a Gardener will be accompanied by a catalog published by Metilene.
With the entry of Arne Quinze’s work, OCA’s itinerary, conceived as a route through the reserve, thus expands further with a new international presence. The walk through woods and glades allows one to encounter works that dialogue with the landscape in unexpected forms. Kengo Kuma ’s Dynamo Pavilion fits among the trees with the lightness of a gust of wind, while Mariangela Gualtieri and Michele De Lucchi ’s Nella terra il cielo combines poetry and architecture in a reflection dedicated to memory and myth. Continuing along the path, Matteo Thun ’s Fratelli Tutti invites meditation through monoliths of local stone arranged in a circle, a symbol of unity and the cycle of life. Quayola’s Erosions, composed of blocks of lava stone sculpted through generative algorithms, highlights the contrast between natural force and technological intervention, while Alejandro Aravena ’s Self-regulation transforms an existing structure into a cue for rethinking living. David Svensson ’s Home of the World and Pascale Marthine Tayou’s lively Plastic Bags, now an integral part of the permanent collection, complete the itinerary.
Over the summer, the project will be further expanded with two new installations. The fuse* collective will present Vanishing Horizon, a corten steel work that makes perceptible the extreme dimension of black holes and the relationship between what we can observe and what remains beyond the threshold of knowledge. The installation aims to translate into space the trajectories of light in the vicinity of these cosmic phenomena, creating a traversable environment that invites the visitor to confront the limit between imaginable and knowable.
Then Stefano Boeri’s new work, Deus Sive Natura - What I Believe, created on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, will be added. The work consists of a ten-meter-long kneeler made of white Carrara marble, facing the horizon and inserted into the landscape of the Apennines as an invitation to contemplation. Kneeling before nature, recognizing it as an interlocutor and symbolically transforming it into a pantheistic temple. The project draws inspiration from St. Francis’ Canticle of Creatures, J.G. Ballard’s secular creed What I Believe, and Spinoza’s pantheistic view that God and Universe coincide in the same immanent and necessary substance.
Each new installation at OCA changes the rhythm of the itinerary, intensifies the dialogue between works and landscape and reinforces the immersive experience that characterizes the project. OCA, part of the Grandi Giardini Italiani network, will be open until Nov. 1, 2026, Thursday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. During August it will also be open on Wednesdays, maintaining the same hours. Admission to the exhibitions is free, while the guided tour in the park costs 20 euros (free for children up to 10 years old) and is accessible only by reservation, with hours available on the official website https://oasycontemporaryart.com/
|
| On the Pistoia Apennines, OCA - Oasy Contemporary Art opens the new season with Arne Quinze |
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.
IT
FR
DE
ES
CN