LE COSE NON NECESSARIE FANNO BELLO IL MONDO
06.10.2019 – 09.02.2020

The title of the 4th Di Carta/Papermade Biennial is not just an invitation to reflect on the nature and the role of beauty within human life, but also a tribute to Raul Meel on the occasion of the opening of the Meel archive at Palazzo Fogazzaro in Schio.

We took inspiration from Meel’s artist autobiography Watching the Wandering Clouds (2011-2013), in which he writes: “Some people believe beauty is worthless; on the contrary, unnecessary things make the world beautiful”.

Meel wrote this annotation after hearing birds singing. He was fascinated by them, so he decided to convert birds’ voices into human ones, putting together amazement and rigor, and turning to ornithologists and manuals. He relied on his experience to fill silences with his poetic brilliance, inventing sounds just like Chlebnikov and singing in the place of these little animals, defined as “the most cheerful creatures in the world” by the Italian poet Leopardi.
Why did he do so? Because beauty is the artist’s faith, and for a man of faith what really matters is not what other people consider to be necessary.

What is the role of unnecessary beautiful things in our fast-paced lives? In a world that worships profit and performance, ruled by strict financial laws and overwhelmed by material goods, we wanted to focus on what is free and light, on lost -rather than spent- time, on the joyful uselessness of beauty. So, artists have been invited to translate the ruleless laws of futility into artworks and images, and to sing the useless need for beauty which affects 21st-century citizens using drawings and paper.

The curator Valeria Bertesina

The exhibition catalogue is available.