Per una geografia antropica (For an anthropic Geography)

Per una geografia antropica (For an anthropic Geography), 2018/2021
Installation. Three digital photographs mounted on plastic and metal supports, two digital prints on the wall, in acrylic and metal frames, suspended luminous display in metal and plastic.
About 300 x 160cm. Photographs 26x22cm each, digital prints 49x37cm each.

Multi-venue event: Tornielli Museum – Parco Neogotico, Ameno. Fondazione Calderara, Vacciago. Sacro Monte di Orta – Cappella Nuova, Orta San Giulio, Italy

On Sunday 19 September 2021, between Ameno and Orta San Giulio, the results of Cartografie Sensibile was presented to the public,;a residential program promoted by CARS, the contemporary branch of the Mastronauta Cultural Association, with the support of the CRT Foundation, the contribution of the Cariplo Foundation and in collaboration with the Municipality of Ameno, the Calderara Foundation and the Management of the Sacri Monti.
The project aims to collect a “sentimental relief” of the geographical-naturalistic-anthropological-cultural area of ​​the extended territory of the VCO through the definition of a “Sensitive Cartography” freely written by contemporary Italian artists. The search for artists began in 2017 in the fields of drawing, graphic design, painting, photography, participatory art, installation.

De Pinto’s temporary residency in Omegna
De Pinto visited the Strona Valley and the coasts of Lake Orta. He identified and focused his research on the northern shore of Lake Orta; Omegna and surrounding areas as a starting point.
Omegna is an Italian town of 15’541 inhabitants in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and is the main center of Cusio, an area located at the extreme northern outskirts of Lake Orta.
Starting from Omegna as a place belonging to the mountain community Due Laghi, Cusio Mottarone and Val Strona, De Pinto moved towards ten stages / basic itineraries within a stay on July 2018.

De Pinto photographed himself in the back of a series of road signs using the reflective metal surface of the panels themselves. The result is a series of photos where the figure of him and the urban landscape are incorporated into the natural landscape of the area visited.
In addition, De Pinto combined these photos with two historical geographic maps from the archive of the University of Texas at Austin. These two Series 4229 military maps, U.S. Army Map Service, from 1941, represent the whole mapping of Italy and a detailed map of Omegna, in the areas traveled on foot by De Pinto during his residence at CARS.

An affective cartography

Cartography is the set of scientific, technical and artistic knowledge aimed at a representation of the symbolic but truthful geographical information – or statistics, demographic, economic, political, culture of a given place, its study through the definition and vision of images and archiving the collected information.
A sentimental journey in solitary but with continuous contacts with people who live in those lands. A sort of affective cartography of places and people.
A narration between past and present obtained through the interpretative tools that De Pinto normally use as impromptu, watercolors, on paper and digital drawings, photographs, printed texts and maps, use of 3D objects, augmented reality, qr codes.
To give back a symbolic but truthful tale, using gateway such as sacred geometry, the study of energy sources and of the specific Genius Loci of a particular area.
A collection of material that has been made accessible to the public in the form of a documentary installation, as a total work of art.
De Pinto’s research, and the consequent final visual and tangible documentation, privileged those subjective elements typical of the relationship between man and territory; the artist used social sciences and forms of communication such as literature and history; above all looking at the cultural expressions in the regional context and taking into account the axiom yesterday-today-tomorrow.

“Cartografia sensibile” project is a sentimental, artistic investigation of the poetics of the Italian territory of “VCO – Verbano Cusio Ossola “, a fluid project that gathered in the course of a three-year period 2017/18/19, a “sentimental relief” of the geographic-naturalistic-anthropological-cultural area of the extended territory of the VCO through the definition of a “Sensitive Cartography”, freely prepared by a variable number of Italian contemporary artists.