The Art & Science exhibition. Visions on cellular morphogenesis, by Claudia Cantoni and Ester Piovesana curated by Viviana Vergerio Guerra, will be inaugurated at Villa Saroli on 15 March 2023, in conjunction with the initiatives promoted during the World Brain Awareness Week.
The exhibition is organized with the sponsorship of the Neurocentro della Svizzera italiana of the Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale, in collaboration with the Ideatorio of the Università della Svizzera Italiana and the support of the IBSA Foundation for scientific research and Banca Stato.
The Art & Science exhibition. Visions on cellular morphogenesis is an ambitious project born with the intention of making the horizons of neuroscientific research known through art. An idea also developed to increase awareness around topics, such as neurodegenerative diseases and processes related to aging, which concern us all very closely.
The exhibition arises from the collaboration between Claudia Cantoni, an artist trained in Graphic Arts and Archeology and the scientist Ester Piovesana, specialized in Biotechnology and Neuroscience, both fascinated by the abstract beauty exerted by cellular entities analyzed under the microscope, manifestations of serious pathologies, and by the common aptitude to operate in a participatory way confronting different experiences.
Art and science become one, two realities enhanced through courageous artistic experimentation, which combines images of brain cells obtained in laboratory research by Ester Piovesana, with surreal ones, created by Claudia Cantoni.
The exhibition, curated by Viviana Vergerio Guerra, which develops in the exhibition spaces of Villa Saroli and the Limonaia della Villa, is an installation divided into two parts, one made up of eighteen paintings made with the mixed technique of acrylic and oil and printed photographs on canvas, accessible at the Limonaia, the other, in the Villa, by the same subjects digitally created and imprinted on acrylic glass, accompanied by a timelapse video amplifying the multimedia dimension of the exhibition.
The initial images, which derive from the observation of neuronal cells and their mutation due to the interaction with special coloring substances used in microbiological research, are incorporated into the artistic work by Claudia Cantoni, according to an approach that aims to leverage visual perception.
The intermediate phase of the process is the digital one, for each work a video has been created that shows the creative process with the aim of allowing the observer to be totally immersed in each phase of the process, stimulating global understanding and consequently involvement, which finds visual and emotional feedback in the paintings executed manually on canvas by the artist. The chosen scientific find represents a fundamental embryonic phase of an interactive process, a piece that becomes part of a whole, or rather a part that already contains a whole, grasped and developed by the artist through his own imagination.
The artist creates new fantastic worlds, different natural scenarios, such as seabeds and mountain panoramas, also restoring the mental states that arise between waking and dreaming. Central to the artist is nature, a precious source of inspiration for her which manifests itself in all its aspects in the work, both in the noble and majestic dimension and in the threatening and disturbing one, uniting the particular with the general, the micro with the macrocosm, the tangible and the intangible. A way of acting, closely linked to the initial narrative cores, generators of new and greater stories.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, with images of the works, edited by Viviana Vergerio Guerra.
The proceeds from the works and catalog sold will be donated to scientific research.
The exhibition will take place in Lugano soon at the Villa Saroli and Limonaia venues from 16 March to 13 April 2023. From 10.00 to 18.00.
