FORESTA ROSSA (Red Forest) is the title of the artistic project performed by Velasco Vitali on Isola Madre (on Lake Maggiore) and in Verbania, in the park of the Grand Hotel Majestic: it is the conclusion of a process that started with Sbarco (in Pietrasanta) and Sbarco a Milano (2010). Foresta Rossa is an ideal (and therefore perhaps impossible) conclusion to the subject of instability addressed in previous projects. The botanical garden on Isola Madre is turned into a landscape suspended in time, like the roundabout set up around the huge Cashmere cypress, which represents the core of the installation and the highlight of the visit. Each work included in the artistic project for Isola Madre is a chapter of a story, where a surreal dreaming invention identifies with a forcedly real vision stressed by the connection among the works, arranged in the garden in close relation with nature. The natural beauty, the botanical perfection, and the almost geometric layout of the place establishes a close relation with the works, as if they had been expressly designed to accommodate them.
“FORESTA ROSSA”
Foresta Rossa (Red Forest) is the name of the pine forest surrounding the Pripjat playground, known as the“city of flowers” since the Chernobyl disaster:
on April 26, 1986 the area suffered a radioactive fallout by which it first turned to red and then died. However, nearby birch and poplar forests later kept their greencolour and remained alive. Thanks to the forced absence of any and all human activities, this area even became an ecological haven for plants and animals:
with no industries or pollution, nature could recover andnow offers broad biodiversity.
The core of radioactivity was the playground itself: a roundabout that never moved (its official opening was scheduled on May 1, 1986) towers in the centre of the square at Pripjat.
