GIOVANNI OZZOLA

Dove Nasce Il Vento is the artist’s first UK solo exhibit and includes photographic stills including one work from his world toured video work Garage – Sometimes You can See Much More, and a series of new sculptures inspired by the vastness of nature and the idea of exploration.

Giovanni’s work encompasses sculpture, photography, video, and examines the individual’s place within the magnitude of the universe and the concept of infinity. Through two large-scale photographic stills entitled Into The Blue and Untitled With Colours, Giovanni explores the relationships between images as a mental representation and reality. Contrasting a pure and untouched image of the horizon with an industrial foreground, he uses light as a tool to guide his vision.

Giovanni has explored the concept of light in its infinite possibilities. His new work focuses on the use of different mediums such as copper, gold, aluminum, bronze and gem stones. Through these pure materials and organic imagery the artist underlines the importance in the idea of discovery, whether physical or through self-exploration.

Golden paths carved into aluminium, retrace and intertwine the journeys of past explorers, to create three wall sculptures entitled The Paths to Ourselves-series, the artist refers to these as a ‘physical human geography.’ The notion of travel and exploration is equally perceived through two ancient large-scale brass propellers belonging to watercrafts caught in seaquakes and shipwrecks and carved with philosophical, scientific and religious treatises. These representations of motion and continuity are exhibited, as wall sculptures and symbolize - moving towards the unknown and exploring something new and unchartered “like when you face your own fears and discover a deeper understanding of yourself.”

Through a series of fifteen wall sculptures entitled Bassorilievi, Giovanni sketches out mountain tops, cloud formations, and stars out of clay, cast in silver and gold. Using a vacuum forum, micro fusion casting technique, the intricacy of these small postcards size works is conveyed. These wall sculptures intentionally scaled down to a modest size, convey their uniqueness, as each captures a cloud, a star or a mountain witnessed by the artist.

The ground floor of the exhibition is marked by a selection bronze head sculptures entitled Una Testa E Un Universo Senza Titolo, 2015, inspired by the classical Hindu tale* The Tenth Canto of the Bhågavatam. Each head is identical in shape and size, but yet are unique as they respectively engulf an amalgamation of gem stones, placed in their mouths to symbolize and replicate the planets and the grandeur of the universe.