This time Palermo is the centre of Planeta’s latest project for Art and Territory.
Two parallel projects are born from the partnership with the Merz Foundation and the ‘Radiceterna’ association which will be Planeta’s concrete contribution to the calendar of events which are enlivening the city. A homage to the city which will be the Italian Capital of Culture for 2018.
The first project is ‘Radiceterna’, an idea of Valentina Bruschi, Ignazion Mortellaro, Vittorio Rappa and Eveline Wüthrich, together with Planeta and the Merz Foundation, included in the program of collateral events of the European biennial of contemporary art Manifesta 12.
The scene of this enterprise is a place particularly close to Planeta; the Botanic Garden of Palermo University. A permanent library based in the Calidarium of the Garden will be presented to the city, with a basis of important books devoted mainly to landscape and contemporary art, and with a small exhibition space where four exhibitions have already been planned for 2018.
‘Radiceterna’ will be inaugurated on 19th May with an exhibition by the Puerto Rican artists Allora and Calzadilla and the exhibition of one of the most representative of Merz’s works ‘Se la forma scompare la sua radice è eterna’ (2003) in front of the Calidarium.
This work at once struck the Planeta family. ‘It seemed to us’, explained Alessio, Francesca and Santi Planeta, ‘the perfect synthesis of what we aspire to achieve every day, with our work in agriculture, on the land, with wine’.
From this arose the second project: ‘We decided, together with the Merz Foundation, to produce a special bottle, which will reproduce on the label the work of this artist from Turin. We are proud and honoured to link one of our wines to the memory of Mario Merz; to be consistent with the cultural and ideological legacy of the Torinese artist it will not be a particularly expensive bottle, though it will be produced in a very limited quantity.’
The first appointment will be 19th May in Palermo, but others will follow.
The fourth edition of the Sciaranuova Festival, at Planeta’s Teatro in Vigna on Etna, has already been planned for the last two weeks of July. At the end of August it will instead be the vines of Noto to host the third edition of Planeta Santa Cecilia in Musica, with the valued contribution of Maestro Giovanni Bietti. In September the beginning of the harvest could also coincide with the eighth edition of our first project in contemporary art, curated by Valentina Bruschi, the itinerant artists’ residence ‘Journey through Sicily’.
