Gilberto Zorio

Gilberto Zorio (born 1944 in Andorno Micca) is an Italian artist associated with the Italian Arte Povera movement.

Zorio's artwork shows his fascination with natural processes, alchemical transformation, and the release of energy.

His sculptures, paintings, and performances are often read as metaphors for revolutionary human action, transformation, and creativity.

He is known for his use of materials including: incandescent electric light tubes, steel, pitch, motifs, and processes through the use of evaporation and oxidation.

He also creates precarious installations using fragile materials such as Stella di Bronzo and Acidi within his work.

Zorio studied at the Scuola di arte e di ceramica (School of Arts and Ceramics) and then the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin (1963-1970).

Zorio's early pieces done between 1966 and 1968 concretized energy processes.

These works utilized the process of chemical reactions or simple physical actions (such as oxidation, evaporation, refining, or electric transmission).

These early works are based on autonomous changes taking place within a given system, or on changes caused by outside intervention (e.g., by the viewer).

These events and changes take place within the work occurring at a slow pace, turning the weight and impact of time and the relentless rhythm of nature into something tangible.

Energy, both on the physical-chemical and emotional level, is common to all these processes.

Zorio originally studied painting, but he soon moved on to sculpture and had his first solo show of three-dimensional works in 1967 at the Galleria Sperone, Turin.

He continued to live there and teach after he graduated.

A lot of Zorio's early work tended toward that which the North American artist Robert Morris identified as a 'dedifferentiation' between the materials and forms of art in post minimalist sculptural practice.

This led to Zorio presenting objects that asserted dynamic relationships with their materials and spatial or environmental context.

This can be seen in Zorio's semi-cylinder of cobalt chloride which changed color in reaction to the spectator's presence.

Throughout his career, Zorio was influenced by Michelangelo Pistoletto, Piero Gilardi, and Mario Merz.

These concepts can be seen in pieces such as: Rosa-blu-rosa, Tenda, Piombi, Senza titolo, 1967 and Senza titolo, 1968.

Since his first exhibition at the Galleria Sperone in Turin in 1967, Gilberto Zorio's work has been linked to the history of Arte Povera.

These first productions were strange objects, which were results of completed actions or ones that are still under way.

Next came his work involving the action and reaction of the artist's body like in Odio ("hate" in Italian), a word inscribed with an ax in a wall.

The role of words and speech is essential in these pieces.

Zorio participated in the famous exhibition When Attitudes Become Form (1969), organized by Harald Szeemann in Bern.

There Zorio presented Torcia, a radical piece where flaming torches, suspended above the ground, fall causing the collapse and destruction of the work itself.

In 1969 he also exhibited in Paris for the first time along with New York for the event "Nine at Castelli" where, with Giovanni Anselmo, they were the only European artists, faced with artists of Process Art, Antiform and Post-minimal artists.

Later in life, Zorio commented on the beginning of the Arte Povera movement and his role, with the other artists of the Arte Povera movement, that "leaving the box or leaving the framework, acting outside the framework, I don't know whether that was understood as a gesture of liberty, of freedom, whether we were understood as a force saying 'Here we are, we are ready to enter into dialog' I think a lot has to do with perception of the other and what happens around the perception of the other.”

Zorio has stated that his belief in art is that “It can’t be masked or disguised, and I think I can say that of the work of so many artists, it can't be masked or hidden or disguised.

And that I think is a very positive fact, I mean you can physically destroy a work of art, you can try and affect its intrinsic strength as a result of the context in which it exists, but I don't think you can actually change it."

Like many of the artist of the expanded Arte Povera movement, Zorio professed faith in and practiced alchemy.

This added to the reasons why Zorio identified with the luck-bringing five pointed pentagram, which is the symbol of Venus.

Many of his pieces were influenced by this belief and influenced his choice in materials.

An example of this is found in his pieces using mine lamps.

One can interpret the lamp as a symbol for the enlightenment of the spirit.

Stars are a recurring theme in Gilberto's work.

It became an obsession and he saw it as a part of the public imagination.

He described his processes in these works by stating "I have done nothing more than make it, drag it in, and make use of it in favor I know not what of, though I hope and believe in favor of a need for energy and amazement."

Zorio has worked with the idea of canoes throughout his career.

He created these using assorted materials such as pitch or steel.

He describes a canoe as " A javelin of water, it is desire and dream, forward motion, the idea of effort, conquest, new landfalls."

Javelins are a recurring theme in Zorio's work.