A second home. For the artist Alfio Mongelli, China is this and perhaps even more. There were many works on display, also made on commission, but one of them is particularly relevant, for two different reasons: the first is connected to the site, considering that it is the city of Wuhan, never before in the centre of the world; the second is for the prophetic and hopeful message it emanates, almost as if to symbolize the return of the planet to life.
The work “O2 – Oxygen” was positioned in front of the Management Centre of the WPDI – Wuhan Planning & Design Institute. The building in question was conceptualized in 1979 and immediately obtained the most important energy and environmental certifications, placing itself in the eyes of Chinese civil society as a successful eco-friendly and environmentally friendly model.
The city of Wuhan is the place where it all began: not only the explosion of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also rebirth, symbolized by the lights that, as usual, ripped through the night, almost as if to define the end of darkness. Between these two extremes, Alfio Mongelli’s work expresses the desire that everyone wants: to return to breathing freely, without conditioning, without hesitation.
The work “O2 – Oxygen” was inaugurated in 2019, and is therefore to be considered a prophetic symbol of hope. “O2” is a creation that interacts with the surrounding space, with the urban layout and, above all, with nature. The message launched by China is aimed at awakening awareness of ecological issues. The rings that make up the structure symbolize the orbits that, like the evolution of facts that involves man, are proposed again. These are the orbits of development.
After all, the relationship between China and the Roman artist is not discovered today. In 2007 the artist exhibited at the University of Tsinghua (China), Academy of Art and Design, in the second edition of the international exhibition “Arte e Scienza”; in 2008 he was selected among 20 world-class artists representing Italian Art at the Beijing Olympics, with the creation of the monumental sculpture H2O; in 2010 he participated in the Shanghai Expo at the “Sculpture for riverside landscaping belt and the site of world”. And in 2014, as part of the International Sculpture, also in Shanghai, exhibits “O2”, a work made of steel that restores the link between art and science that has illuminated the path of the artist through the centuries, in the passage between the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the new millennium. Nobel Prize Rita Levi Montalcini said of him: “The physical-mathematical rigour that characterises the important works of Alfio Mongelli is exalted by the expressive freedom that rejects any scientific schematism. The unity and synthesis achieved in his creations, whether these large sculptures made of stainless steel or expressed in a graphic of geometric shapes, highlight the exceptional personality of the artist among the most representative of contemporary art. And in this becoming to admire the works of Maestro Alfio Mongelli in China is a immersion in the contemporary that the Made in Italy generates.
