Garage Collina d’Oro © Museo Hesse Montagnola
Pop-up exhibition
6 September 2025 – 7 September 2025 · Garage Collina d’Oro, Via Sant'Abbondio 44, Gentilino ♿
There is time that unfolds slowly. There is an invisible language hidden in the veins of wood. A slow, vertical voice that travels through space. Trees communicate. Hermann Hesse senses this deeply: for him, trees are sanctuaries. And those who know how to listen to them – he says – discover the truth.
This pop-up exhibition, hosted in a car repair shop – a space dominated by metal and paint – brings together the works of five artists whose creations establish a profound dialogue with nature and with trees. Sandro Pianetti presents sculptures and bas-reliefs made from materials gathered in the forest, reimagined through unconventional techniques that evoke the raw force of their origin. Alongside him, Marcel Hürzeler – an artist rooted in Vernate who passed away in 2022 – gives voice and identity to the hidden form of matter through his sculptures carved from local wood. Movement and the perception of matter lies at the heart of the immersive installations by Roberto Mucchiut and Valentina Pini: using video as a medium, they explore different forms of dialogue – at times subtle, almost imperceptible – between human beings and the vegetal world. Finally, Flavia Arzeni guides us to the ultimate condition of organic matter: a death that sets in motion a process of multiple metamorphoses.
In direct and striking contrast with the industrial space – dense with human presence and in constant flux – the works in dialogue invite us to pause and ask what nature might truly have to tell us, once we stop speaking and begin to listen.
Curated by: Marcel Henry & Fiona Geuss
Opening: Fr 5 September 2025, 17.00, aperitif (free contribution)
Opening hours: Sa and Su, 10.30 – 17.30
Free admission, voluntary donation
BIO
Marcel Hürzeler was born in Basel in 1952. After spending a period in South America, he moved to Berlin, where in the 1980s he co-owned and worked as a chef at Lucky’s Pizzeria in Schöneberg and Lavandevil in Charlottenburg. In the early 1990s, he returned to Switzerland and worked as a gardener in Ticino for over twenty years. From the early 2000s onward, while working in the Ticino woods, he began collecting pieces of wood which he then transformed into sculptures. Marcel Hürzeler passed away in Chur in 2022.
Sandro Pianetti (1987) is a visual artist living and working in Locarno. After earning a BA in Visual Arts from ÉCAL in Lausanne, he completed a MAS in Interaction Design at SUPSI. His works, created primarily with organic materials, explore the relationship between human beings and systems of creation, reflecting a strong interest in the generative and transformative processes of the materials he uses. Since 2017, he has been a member of Sonnenstube (Lugano) and collaborates with the Markus Zohner Arts Company as an interaction designer. His recent exhibitions include La Regionale, Lugano (2023); Espace libre, Biel/Bienne (2022); Spazio Officina, Chiasso (2022, 2019); Residenza La Fornace (2018); Oficina Cero, Buenos Aires (2019); Spiegleray, Zurich (2018); La Rada, Locarno (2018); and Sonnenstube, Lugano (2017).
Valentina Pini (1982) studied at HEAD Geneva and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and earned a Master’s degree in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art in London. Her recent exhibitions include the Vincenzo Vela Museum in Ligornetto, ArteSOAZZA, and So Far, So Close in Beijing. Her work was featured in the Swiss Art Awards 2024, and in the same year she received a prize from the UBS Cultural Foundation. Pini’s artistic practice revolves around the perception of matter, challenging our understanding of material reality and the permanence of things.
Roberto Mucchiut (1960) lives and works in Agra. He is a multimedia and digital artist with a background in computer science, photography and video, music, and sound design. His research spans photographic language, electroacoustic music, video art, and new technologies, and investigates their relationship with human beings, society, nature, and science. His artistic exploration—centered on the perception of space and time—constantly moves between analog and digital worlds, between the creation of unpredictable processes and the exploration of improvisation as a form of time sublimation. He often collaborates with other artists, particularly in the field of performing arts (theatre, contemporary dance, and music), while also developing and exhibiting personal photographic and multimedia projects.
Flavia Arzeni is a university lecturer, essayist, and visual artist. For many years, her work has focused on the relationship between literature, philosophy, and visual languages. In recent years, she has devoted her artistic practice to nature—and trees in particular—creating drawings, poems, photographs, and installations inspired by her studies on Goethe and Hesse, as well as by Buddhist teachings that conceive the cosmos as one vast, interconnected whole.