SVEN GROSSKEUTZ / NANCY JAHNS :  SPAZIO
– an association to Francesco Patrizi da Cherso

Through researches about landscape and space in Cres we found something amazing about the philosopher Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (1529 –1597), who was born in Cres. He exceptional named his own way of philosophical thought: panpsychism. From that fact and some more information we took the chance to combine the landscape, the nature, and the idea of soul – that gives a wide impression of what land-art here could be.

So we used some points of his work and transformed them into an apparently celebrating object: the triangle for the geometric thoughts – in mathematics he gave the space and geometry the priority to arithmetics. The upper part of the object you see from far as a design, a linear sketch against the sky, reminding on a door. Plastic ribbons in the bottom-part as a moving and „living“ curtain around this are standing for a terrestrial excitement. The two levels are in a balance.

We placed the object on the side of one of the fertile hollows in the space of Stanzia Castellani. It is standing like a spectator in a little amphitheater. If you come nearer, you may find similarities to  ordinary things like a shower-cabin or a skirt. If you enter the triangle room to go inside the object, you see the light shining through the coloured strings and between pieces of landscape and you hear the subtle sound of the moving curtain.

Francesco Patrizi was born 1529 in Palazzo Arsan in Cres.  As a boy of 9 years he went 4 years to the sea with his uncle at an venecian warship against the Ottoman Empire. He went to study Greek and philosophie in Ingolstadt and Italy. He worked several years in Cyprus as a melioration-advisor at estates of some patriciannes. Later he went to Ferrara, the centre of Platonism in Italy and in the end of his career he finally was invited in Rom by Clemens VIII., where he spent five years as the chair of Platonic philosophy in Rome, where he died as well.

About his thoughts it is shortly sayed: „Patricius’ theory of the universe is that, from God there emanated Light which extends throughout space and is the explanation of all development. This Light is not corporeal and yet is the fundamental reality of things. From Light came Heat and Fluidity; these three together with Space make up the elements out of which all things are constructed. This cosmic theory is a curious combination of materialistic and abstract ideas.“ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franciscus_Patricius)