12/1/2001
Angel Orensanz
Citta, Caserta
Angel Orensanz will present his new work 'Il Progetto Miglio - The Mile Project' in Caserta, near Naples, (Italy), on Saturday January 13. Working with a group of local artisans and laborers, he is digging a furrow of about 20 meters long and two meters wide, to be filled with wet concrete. Then he will inscribe over his personal signs and figurations half way archaic and futuristic.
Il Progetto Miglio - The Mile Project.
Angel Orensanz will present his new work "Il Progetto Miglio - The Mile Project" in Caserta, near Naples, (Italy), on Saturday January 13.
Working with a group of local artisans and laborers, he is digging a furrow of about 20 meters long and two meters wide, to be filled with wet concrete. Then he will inscribe over his personal signs and figurations half way archaic and futuristic. It will remain buried in the ground like a long slab of the Via Appia Antica, like the street that connected the royal summer residence of Caserta with downtown Naples; in a second phase it will reach the Mediterranean seashore.
The last segment of this mile, two years from now, will be constructed in Long Island, New York, like a bridge over the Ocean between the lands of the Campania in Southern Italy and the State of New York, where tens of thousands of emigrants of Naples and its surrounding regions live.
Angel Orensanz sees his sculpture as a work in progress, to be carried in several stages. This first segment will be unveiled during a European cultural symposium in Naples called "Scavari il futuro - Nuovi Spazi Antichi... Unearthing the future - Old New Spaces" that will take place at the middle of this January.
Born in Aragon, Spain, Angel Orensanz was raised in Barcelona and Paris. From the 1960 he has exhibited his work in Paris, London, Sao Paulo, Japan, New York, Tokyo and Toronto. In 1986 he saved from demolition one of the most beautiful buildings in America, a German Jewish synagogue, built in 1849 with a deep Hegelian outlook. It is located in Lower Manhattan and has been called the "Lincoln Center of the Lower East Side".
Orensanz has been awarded, among other distinctions, the gold medal of the French Academy (1999) and the "Lorenzo il Magnifico" Award of the City of Florence (2000).
For information, please, call the:
Angel Orensanz Foundation - 172 Norfolk St. - New York, NY - Tel. 212 529 7194 - Fax. 212 529 1864