Maria Perosino

Environmental emergencies, genetics, biodiversity and artificial nature: these themes are increasingly addressed and developed by artists in works that alternate investigation, protest, planning and utopia. Different issues and approaches with a common origin: the conviction that no aesthetic appraisal can be divorced from ethical responsibility with respect to scientific and technological research and knowledge of its effects on the natural and behavioural landscape that surrounds us. The scientific analysis of nature has enabled artists to enter into the dynamics of the environment we inhabit, make it their own and attain a position of greater awareness, abandoning the contemplation of nature that distinguished artistic production up to and indeed beyond the end of the 19th century. With the effectiveness and concision of contemporary visual language, artists today not only interpret problems that affect many but also tangibly present intangible scenarios otherwise known only to specialists. The book unfolds like an exhibition made up of a series of thematic stages, visual chapters that use a broad selection of images to combine investigation of the present and prefiguration of the future. Every chapter is enriched with a short anthology of first-hand evidence and writings by key figures juxtaposed with the views of scientists, writers, ethologists and art historians.