Cracking Art play in with plastic animals in XTD
Print Edition
A colorful army of snails, swallows, frogs, meerkats and wolves are “invading” Shanghai’s landmark Xintiandi, crawling in the square, positioned on the front or fixed on the high walls.
“Animals landing” at XTD is the first installation by Cracking Art in China, designed for real contact with the local audience. It brings a wave of joy and regeneration to the city until the end of August.
Cracking Art, a group of international artists known for over twenty years of their lively, original, interactive plastic installations, wish to transmit their values here — love for art and for nature — hoping to create an interaction between artworks and people.
Before finally landing in China, over 390 invasions were carried out up to now by the giant animals all over the world, including the United Nations building and Central Park in New York, Duomo in Milan and the latest at Reggia di Caserta, one of Italy’s most astonishing palaces.
Last year, during Milan Expo, the Cracking Art installations are placed in different spots in the city of Milan. “The creation of the Snail comes from Milan Expo: a sort of unofficial testimonial for the mission of Milan and an invitation to regenerate the urban dimension through the awareness of new energies,” said Kicco, head artist of Cracking Art group.
“Our activities are also founded on the idea that contemporary art can save the past and promote concrete actions for the restoration of monuments: during the project of Duomo Milano we organized a fund-raising for the Cathedral restoration through the exhibition of 50 blue snails.”
The artist said that the sculptures represent the animal world, which immediately reminds us not only about Aesop, Phaedrus and the Grimm Brothers’ characters, but also the stories of contemporary cartoons. Cracking Art sculptures have something magic about them: they turn on the imagination and transporting us into a world of wonders where everything is possible and where experience and dreams are combined with the creativity in each of us.
Cracking art movement was born in 1993 in Italy to radically change the history of art through a strong social and environmental commitment in conjunction with a revolutionary use of plastic materials in order to investigate the close relation between natural and artificial reality.
“Everything started thanks to friendship: we were six friends with a great passion for art, design and photography,” Kicco said. “The group-dimension doesn’t limit the individual creativity: each member of the movement works also in an independent way and is free to choose how much time they want to spend on Cracking Art activities.”
The choice of recycled plastic for the sculptures is for its aesthetic appeal and plastic has its roots in a millenary tradition of civilization. “It’s the material that characterizes our Era and if we think about nanotechnology, we understand that plastic will also be very important in the future,” Kicco said.
Plastic also represents a resource that could be used without producing pollution. “Plastic has properties of a virtually eternal power: it can be crushed and reshaped into other sculptures. This regenerative process, metaphor of the life cycle, is related to a deep environment sensibility. Moreover, we can express empathy toward nature with artworks representing the animal world.”
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