#arteborghi: The standing art

Antonio Fraddosio’s commitment for the environment is “sometimes great and immense”, it’s an explosion of the soul against the environment deterioration. This is the strong artistic message of the sculptor Antonio Fraddosio (Barletta, 1951) who states that “the art and any creative expression must not disregard the spiritual values». These are the words of an artist who calls himself a campaigner for whom “making a work of art in this historical age is mainly a political action, it’s the reaction against the globalized economic and financial power that

forces us into a servile condition». So the installation “the coveralls and the steel” (Modern Art Gallery, Rome; 1st November 2018 – 3rd March 2019) has arised the attention about the environmental issue of Ilva of Taranto and the personal involvment of the artist is evident in his installation: «My memories of Taranto before Italsider are clear and they are still alive in my mind. Taranto was a wonderful city, laying between two seas (…) there were many colours and tastes that don’t exist anymore (…) it was a city of golden stones».

The Ilva case

«I arrived from Martina Franca, Antonio Fraddosio continues to tell his stoy, Taranto wasn’t there anymore. I saw the hell of fire and smoke. The biggest European steel plant had eaten the city». The artist’s words are touching and his works are intense: «My work doesn’t simply implies the condemnation of the environment problem but it also aims at showing its original causes».According to a quote by Gabriele Simongini (Catalogue GAM Rome) the “ten big broken folded powerful and mysterious plates featured by poisonous lethal colours that get their inspiration from the rust layers, the heavy reddish

dust, the brown and black shades that wrap the city” come out of this will. The plates are compared with the workers’ coverall hung outside the showers’ area after the workig shift, they show the shape of their body and convey the feelings of pain, death and destruction. The artist’s work has a great impact because of his strong ideals, he states: «My installation is dedicated to the very serious consequences of the envornmental degradation on the territory and on the people» but an hopeful vision can even come out by reporting this terrible disaster represented by these broken folded plates.

The universal th emes

The artist tells about his artistic development: «I have come to that after a group of works that obsrved the overall situation in the last decades». “The coveralls and the steel” belongs to a group of works called “What’s left of development” but there are also other universal themes taken into account in Antonio Fraddosio’s works. He had already started the cycle “Social animal” in the 1990s that took inspiration from the existential condition of the contemporary humankind followed by the cycle “The construction of

destruction” that underlined the dramatic effects of a boundless crisis that features the human tragedies. In this work the artist highlights the idea of “constructed destruction”: «the chaotic image of this work (broken, stuck materials, so tight they may break down) is the outcome of a careful construction. The same can be said to describe the real and systematic destruction of the environment which is carried out through the implementation of a specific strategy aiming at getting the highest economic profits».

Human kind and freedom

a big torn petrified waving flag. The black colour symbolizes the highest visionary type of democracyh: anarchy. That flag is not waving anymore, it’s closed inside a suspended cage that enables very few stiff movement through its gear. Instead a flag should be light and free. After all, this is the main consquence of the power: slowly destroying the true nature of the human beings». (Original texts freely taken from an interview with the artist by Carmelita Brunetti).