On Friday 3 November 2023, the PAV Parco Arte Vivente, in the setting of Artissima, presents the exhibition Car Crash. Piero Gilardi and poor art edited by Marco Scotini, which investigates the production of Piero Gilardi (Turin, 1942-2023) during the 1960s. The exhibition aims to present itself as a tribute to the founder of PAV and retraces the beginnings of the artist's career by exploring the years from 1964 to 1969, a germinal season during which Gilardi's multiple interests and his great contribution were already emerging at the origin of the Arte Povera movement. Car Crash is the first of a series of monographic exhibitions of a long-term PAV project which, following a chronological division, will delve into the artist's work. The exhibition goes through a rich, albeit brief, moment (five years in total) characterized by Gilardi's involvement in some of the most important stages of the poor movement, including the Arte Abitabile exhibition (1966) at the Sperone Gallery, the creation of the Deposito d'Arte Presente of Turin (1967-1969), the theory of micro-emotional art, until its definitive liberation from the movement with the exhibition Arte Povera plus Actions Poor at the Amalfi arsenals (1968).

From the beginning, his interest in the relationship between technology, human beings and nature and the desire to create functional works of art animated by the viewer emerged, as well as his openness towards other disciplines, such as his experiences in the field of radical design late sixties. What emerges is Gilardi's tireless desire to understand and theorize the deepest meaning of the art and work of artists encountered internationally and nationally, moving from inventor of forms to inventor of formations: his definition of "micro-art emotional” is an example of this. This commitment is demonstrated by the various letters written to friends and colleagues, and by the correspondence for the magazine Flash Art sent from New York and various European cities, and heralds the importance of his theoretical contribution to two milestone exhibitions such as Op Losse Schroeven (Amsterdam, 1969) and When Attitudes Become Form (Bern, 1969). An analytical thought that includes a critical position of the mechanisms that govern the art system and market, which starting from 1969 led Gilardi to choose to temporarily distance himself from the national and international art scene, to dedicate himself to political activism in continuity with the requests raised by the political movements of '68.