In the PERENNE series, etched and oxidised, the sheets (of copper) absorb the imprint of natural elements, fragments of the plant world (the partial imprints of tree trunk cross-sections), identified and selected but not manipulated, their shapes and sizes impressed like a negative and – following a radical drying process – devoid of all organic qualities and transformed into metal surfaces. (…) These works, identical in medium and technique, powerfully introduce the theme of nature, or better still, of the plant world, which for Gori is never the subject of representation, like in the figurative tradition of the modern age, nor of mere ‘presentation’, like in many contemporary experiences over the past half century at least. Here, the element of nature, (…) acts as a generator of images, as a device that causes the figure to take shape, life and autonomy. This element, the starting point of reference, cannot be represented because it does not remain inert in the execution process. It instead in some way intervenes directly in the same, to become an instrument at the artist’s disposal, the agent of a new form that derives from itself but not through the volume of its material and organic consistency, but rather through the void of the imprint, of the track, of the semblance of its own presence.

 

Marco Pierini, Terram Vertere, from the catalogue of the exhibition Federico Gori, Come afferrare il vento – Curated by Marco Pierini – ed. Gli Ori Editori Contemporanei, Pistoia 2015.