We are delighted to present the last steps of ARS IN HERBIS – An alchemical journey, a one- year-long project aiming to develop, both in a philosophical and poetic way, the alchemical theme of transformation, seen through the art of herbariums.

The exhibition has unfolded its complexity during the months, together with the works of the artists who, step by step, with various techniques and meanings, followed the development of a five-step journey into different states of matter and existence: Emanatio, Distillatio, Impressio, Dissolutio and Incarnatio.

If we try to understand the whole process using very simple concepts, the first step, EMANATIO, evokes the subtle, mysterious emanation which constitutes the “aura” of the material form and even survives it for a while.

DISTILLATIO is the art of extracting the very essence, and refers to an alchemical procedure and to poetry as well.

IMPRESSIO has to do with both a photographic medium and the feeling, vehiculated by light, that we have of every living creature.

DISSOLUTIO is the prelude to abstraction, where the shape crumbles and it is then recomposed following logics other than literal ones.

INCARNATIO closes the circle bringing us back to the glory of life’s forms, with all their enchanting and explosive multiplicity of shapes, colors, dimensions and sensorial wonder.

The project opened on April 2024 on the occasion of the International Venice Art Biennale’s preview with Emanatio, and the exhibition of roman artist Andrea Fogli’s Erbario Planetario, an installation of fifty drawings realised with blue pastel powder. The work is composed by a kind of “celestial prints” made by the artist using real plants he gathered since 2017, during different walks in natural places particularly meaningful, like Monte Verità, the Fondazione Baruchello, Piantagione Paradise, Cazalla de la Sierra, Oberammergau or Norcia.

Thanks to its refined and philosophical sensibility, the artist allows us to connect with the more subtle essence of both plants and the genius loci of their places of origin.

The theme of Distillatio has been then developed on the occasion of The Venice Glass Week, in September 2024.

A room full of books, maps, alembics, vases, herbs, and the recognizable paraphernalia, but also, in the middle of all this, the magic presence of Tristano di Robilant’s Three Alchemists, some Poetic

Stills by Pico, and, as a special guest, the Roma Prize winning sculpture Il Gufo by maestro Primo Bollani, one of the last custodians of the ancient art of blacksmiths in Venice.

Tristano di Robilant is an italian-american artist, internationally renown for the quality of his research which marries poetry with the art of glass. His site-specific installation, titled The Three Alchemists, includes three sculptures hand blown in Murano. One piece titled the Itinerant Alchemist refers to the peripatetic existence of the alchemist, perpetually seeking the elusive formula for the transmutation of base metals into precious silver or gold – but also, in a wider sense, the search for a transmutation of the Self into a higher state of consciousness. The two sculptures titled The Alchemists from the Orient refer to the Chinese tradition of alchemy and its quest for immortality. They are pictured here ideally as silver clouds atop a ruby and an emerald mountain. The discoveries of those ancient alchemists are the very foundations of Chinese traditional medicine.

The series of Pico’s Poetic Stills is based on the consideration that poetry is also a distillation, as every activity of human consciousness is, on its own path to evolution.

From the childhood memories of the smells and sounds of a real alchemist’s laboratory, and the love for Dante Alighieri ( who also was a member of the Confraternita degli Speziali ), the artist created these playful alembics to interact in a poetic and subliminal way with the viewer’s mind and soul, evoking the possibility to elaborate, with a little psicomagic act, anything unresolved which may block the flow of an harmonious life.

“Psicomagic” is a healing technique based on creative and poetic acts founded by Alejandro Jodorovskj, one of Pico’s teachers.

Roberta Fosca Fossati presents for Impressio a little impressive body of photographic works, Dialogues, absolutely free from any kind of photoshop. Here she pictures some of the many flowers she gathered and dried into books during her life, including a couple of the ones who survived a destructive fire. A kind of herbarium of memories, where amazing colors and textures have been awakened by sunlight after a long sleep.

As she writes: ”What trace do we leave of our passage on earth? Will it originate from actions, by absence or by essence? And if we lived in the shadows, would we leave transparent traces? And will all the emotions felt come together in a kind of sea of energy? And will transient beauty, too, leave its traces? I look for footprints that I have felt drawn to. I carefully place them in some corner… there is no book that does not contains some small hint of the place where I read it. Fragments of nature dried that followed me like footprints of my memory. This work was born from the casual encounter between a dry flower and a ray of sunshine. This originated a process where the dried flower, transformed by the element light/fire/sun, comes back to life in a new vibrational dimension in which, surprisingly, all the other elements are visible.”

Fossati’s work Il pensiero nel fuoco, depicting her 3.500 volume’s library completely destroyed by fire, has been exhibited in 2011 at La Biennale di Venezia.

The concept of Dissolutio digs into the sense of caducity but also of the coincident apparent dichotomy between the pre and the post, the end and the beginning. Death is not only after life, it’s also before the new one. When matter melts and get dissolved, it starts inevitably a process of rebirth.

Mauro Pipani

The diptych Prima del fiore / avant la fleur (before the flower) is a metafore for life itself, a veiled symbol of waiting for potential to grow and become. Here we have the image of a flower not blooming yet, but expressing its own will to be, by whispering its presence, doubling, unveiling its sleeping matter, still deeply silently.

In the quadriptych Germinazioni the pigment’s obsidations on gauze created, with time, some chemical alterations, reminding us the affinity between the growth of natural elements and our own soul in its eternal becoming.

Pipani’s work brings an intimate vision, deeply linked to life’s cycle and to the transformation of the emotional experience.

As Vittoria Coen wrote, “the becoming of his work is never concluded, but, on the contrary, always open to the infinite.”

François-Xavier Saint Pierre

The Boscolo and Herm series consists of imagined landscapes produced following a residency at the French Academy in Rome. Its motifs are inspired by the extraordinary botanical heritage of the Villa Medici gardens and the ancient Greek and Roman herms found there – marble relics of ancient landmarks, or markers of crossroads. Echoing the function of the herms, the paintings themselves play with the idea of boundaries. These works do not play with topographical space however, but rather with the idea of thresholds – they explore the limits between recognition and obfuscation, between nameable forms and their dissolution.

The painting Temple references a valley in Thessaly Greece sacred to the deities Artemis and Apollo. Below the canopied forest, just beyond a reflecting pool under a crepuscular sky, rests a vertical form, perhaps a small temple or aedicula. The tiny structure topped with a pediment suggests a refuge. Its pale geometry contrasts with the dark foliage. Its hue shines like a brilliant gem in a mineshaft.

Finally we arrive at the last step of the alchemical journey, Incarnatio, where the circle of life closes and reopens, going back again and again to the glorious explosion of variety of shapes and colors.

Austin Young is a multidisciplinary artist whose trademark style interprets a nuanced visual language of beauty, Pop culture, art history, folk art, and transgressive underground exuberance. Whether he’s working in a photography- and video-based modes of performative portraiture, engaging in assertive visibility for Queer culture, or advocating for a community-based resource sharing culture through the literal and metaphoric prism of public fruit trees, Young’s interest is in illustrating the sublime qualities of humanity that moves us all forward.

Righteously considering himself as a Beauty Activist, the artist brought for ARS IN HERBIS a work commissioned to him by the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome, where he created an outstanding installation for the exhibition “Flowers”.

La Porta del Paradiso is an artwork on chiffon, moving with wind and changing with light, that we can consider as a summa of all the meanings expressed until now, for the sense of lightness, awe and joy we receive through it.

Being also an homage to the Divine Feminine, its meaning embodies the fulfillment of our exploration.

Distillating to the essence the very meaning of the whole project, we can say that Alchemy, in the end, is nothing but the journey of a human being to become the better version of himself, developing the consciousness of the unity between all beings.

ARS IN HERBIS is dedicated to Eliseo Burati (1924-1986), a prominent figure of researcher, pharmacist, herbalist, humanist and alchemist, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. Part of his personal herbarium is here displayed for the duration of the exhibition.

This project is also a grateful homage to all the unknown human beings who, during the centuries, devoted themselves to the exploration of life’s mystery. In the attempt to understand the causes of illness or healing, and wanting to improve the quality of existence, they considered the fundamental unity between body, mind and spirit. This keeps being the basic principle for every true humanistic quest.