A new work of contemporary art has joined the Fermo Municipal Collection, marking a new step in the dialogue between historical heritage and current artistic research. It is Shape. Seeking Shape, a site-specific and context-specific work by Eugenio Tibaldi, officially presented at the Civic Archaeological Museum inside the former Dominican Convent. The work was created as part of the PAC2024 - Plan for Contemporary Art, a call promoted by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, and is the result of an articulated project promoted by the City of Fermo in collaboration with the Karussell association. The presentation of the work was accompanied by a documentary exhibition that reconstructed its ideational and creative process. An opportunity to delve into the motivations behind the artistic intervention and understand the participatory dynamics that characterized the process. The exhibition also included Simposio, an installation created by Tibaldi in collaboration with the students of the Liceo Artistico Preziotti Licini high school, reinforcing the inclusive and formative character of the entire project.
“It was a great success,” say the organizers, “the public was amazed and enchanted by the sculpture that is mirrored in the water and put in dialogue with the Fermano landscape that can be seen from the windows behind it.”
The project is part of a broader strategy launched in 2021 by the Municipality of Fermo together with the Karussell association, under the scientific direction of art historian and curator Matilde Galletti, president of the association. The goal is to promote an active relationship between the cultural and social fabric of the city and contemporary art practices, involving prominent national and international figures. After the experiences with Vedovamazzei in 2021 and Chiara Camoni between 2022 and 2023, the project saw the participation of Eugenio Tibaldi, an artist who for years has been exploring the physical and psychological margins of contemporary societies, with a particular focus on the suburbs and the dynamics of urban transformation. For the city of Fermo, Shape represents the result of an artistic experience developed through a participatory process that actively involved the citizenry. The work was born from a series of informal meetings, questionnaires and moments of listening that allowed the artist to collect reflections, visions and memories related to the landscape and the collective history of the territory. The collected suggestions were translated into a layered and complex sculpture composed of books, galvanized metal, resins and a water base. Placed among the archaeological remains of the former Dominican Convent, the work establishes a direct dialogue with the museum context, proposing a suspended and abstract form that recalls the profiles of the Marche hills. The upper part of the work closes with a volume that recalls the outline of Fermo Cathedral, thus fitting into the visual and symbolic fabric of the city. The use of books as the main material is not purely aesthetic: they represent the submerged narratives, local histories and collective memories that, layered over time, define the identity of a place. The sculpture thus becomes a “contemporary artifact,” capable of visually restoring the social and cultural changes that have swept through Fermo in recent decades.
The project draws direct inspiration from La forma spezzata (Allemandi, 2023), a volume created by Tibaldi himself, in which the artist reflects on the identity disorientation of the Italian province between the 1980s and the early 2000s. A historical period that, according to Tibaldi, marked a deep fracture in the sense of belonging and in the construction of collective identities. The work is therefore configured as a visual reflection on this “loss of form,” an attempt to give an interpretation of it through the language of art. In parallel, the documentary exhibition set up in the spaces of the Archaeological Museum offered the public an immersive journey into the genesis of the work. Preparatory drawings, sketches, notes and materials collected during the course of the project were exhibited, allowing the main stages of the creative development to be followed. A special space was reserved for the installation Symposium, a large tree that develops from a chair and whose branches house a multitude of birds. Inspired by the Persian poem The Word of the Birds by Farid ad-din Attar, the work was created with the active involvement of the students of the Liceo Artistico Preziotti Licini, who collaborated with the artist in the design and construction of the installation.
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| Eugenio Tibaldi's "Shape" enters the Fermo Municipal Collection of Contemporary Art |
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