Alessandro di Lorenzo, a 5th year student at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, has won the Prix de la Colle Noire.
He was chosen from among eight candidates shortlisted by a professional jury following a call for ephemeral outdoor artistic creations to be installed in the gardens of Christian Dior's Château de la Colle Noire near Grasse.
This ‘life-size’ educational experiment is being carried out in partnership with Christian Dior Parfums, sponsor of the ‘Inhabiting the Landscape’ Chair in artistic hospitality practices for living art at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, coordinated by Estelle Zhong-Menghal.
Templum is an ephemeral copper sculpture, created by electroplating from an olive tree destroyed by a bacterium that decimated many plantations in Puglia, the region of southern Italy where the artist grew up. This sculpture is destined to disappear, its material being gradually removed and reduced to copper sulphate, to be sprayed on the estate's vines, protecting them from parasites and ensuring their growth.
‘Far from disappearing, the sculpture will be transformed. Its initial form will mutate to link the olive trees with the surrounding vines, to care for them and protect them from bacteria and fungi. It is a sculpture capable of highlighting the links that exist between the living beings that populate‘...[the land in which it is integrated]. Alessandro di Lorenzo
Alessandro di Lorenzo
Templum, sculpture en cuivre éphémère
