Cildo Meireles - Nobile di Montepulciano, Avignonesi

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Cildo Meireles

1 9 4 8 R i o D e J a n e i r o

Cildo Meireles is one of Brazil ’s most important and widely acclaimed artists.A pioneer of installation art since the sixties,his oeuvre also includes drawings,sculptures and objects.Particularly significant are his extremely unusual and poetic walk-in environments,geared to kindle the spectator ’s full sensorial and intellectual awareness.Paying close attention to sensual qualities,Meireles works with nearly scientific precision and minimalist polish.Aiming to expose and at the same time offer alternate worlds to our numbing,estranged reality,his art is endowed with strong
symbolic and political content.
Fontes,1992,shown at Documenta IX,was an environment with 7000 yellow rulers hanging from the ceiling and 200 non-synchronized clocks on the walls.Others are markedly sensorial and incorporate sound,fire and smells:Volatile,1980/84,was produced with ash,candles and the odour of natural gas,while the installation/action The Sermon of the Mount,1973/79,made use of 126,000 matches,mirrors and five actors.The artist creates the conditions whereby the spectator –who is totally immersed in the work –can grasp its meaning through direct physical
experience.In other works,for example Incursions in ideological circuits (from 1970),he slips symbolic viruses into the standardized circuit of production,writing denunciatory comments on banknotes or substituting the label on Coca Cola bottles with “Yankee go Home!”and then putting them back into circulation.
For Documenta XI in 2002,Meireles produced a work entitled Disappearing Element/Disappeared Element (Imminent Past),which combines a critical vision of the system of the exchange of goods and an urgent call to consider the progressive deterioration of the environment.He made ice lollies out of drinking water,and organized mobile sales points in various
locations around the city.The vendors were recognizable because they had coloured carts,and the proceeds from sales went directly to them.With this work,Meireles alludes to the growing shortage of water on the planet and invites us to reflect on the relations between art and the market,on the notions of use value and exchange value,where the only effective action of dissent must necessarily be the disappearance of the object itself.
For Arte all ’Arte,Meireles found the ideal location for his work in a vegetable garden very close to the historic city centre.It is a quiet space,an oasis of tranquillity run by the Orto dei Pecci community,which for many years now has been helping people with psychological difficulties.
In this context,tending a collective vegetable garden is a concrete opportunity to do work that encourages responsibility and demands attention and respect for the rhythms of nature;these rhythms follow a pattern that is very different to the fast pace of tourism,which,besides anything else,is literally devouring the art cities.

Avignonesi Vino Nobile di Montepulciano 2000, 13 %

Over two third of Prugnolo Gentile (another Sangiovese clone), some Canaiolo nero and a splash of Mammolino are the very traditional variety of the Avignonesi’s Nobile, one of the most highly renowned of this appellation.
Half of the wine is matured in big oak cask and the other half in barriques, before the assemblage and the final six moths of bottle ageing.
A lively garnet colour and a very fruity character, with black cherries, dry herbs and a delicate floral touch. It is a very expressive wine with a wonderful degree of complexity. On the palate the black cherries are still dominating, followed by black berries, elegant smokey and tobacco leaves notes well associated to sweet and fine tannins. With an exceptional high drinkable and harmonic character, this wine is full of surprises.