Contemporary art at the foot of the Limbara
In Tempio Pausania on Sunday, 1 June, the new season of the ‘Organica’Museum of Environmental Art, immersed in the unspoilt nature of the Limbara Park.
In the setting of the Bosco di Curadureddu forest, a rich programme of exhibitions, installations, cultural events and environmental workshops until December 2025.
At the Museum of Environmental Art Organica , in the Limbara Park, until December 2025 a packed calendar of exhibitions, workshops, performances, happenings, concerts and cultural trekking appointments dedicated to the discovery of places, the excellence of the territory and reflection on the themes of environmental sustainability.
The common thread between the various activities of the project, now in its sixth season, is the relationship between man and nature. Organica was created to create a moment of encounter with the places on the island, an original opportunity to discover the extraordinary beauty of this land and, at the same time, offer food for thought on the complex relationship between human beings and the natural environment.
Eleven exhibitions are scheduled in the exhibition spaces of CEDAP – Centro per la Documentazione sull’Ambiente e sul Paesaggio located a few kilometres from Tempio Pausania, in the Curadureddu forest, dedicated to contemporary art, nature photography and the environment.
After the preview dedicated to Igino Panzino, the protagonists of the 2025 calendar are five visual artists who pay special attention to environmental issues, representing some of the most interesting outcomes of contemporary visual research in Sardinia and on the Peninsula: Pastorello, Fabiana Casu, Flatform, Valentina Daga and Giulia Sale.
Alongside the contemporary art exhibitions, there are also photographic and documentary exhibitions that tell the story of Gallura and Sardinia, in the photographs of Francesco Cubeddu and Domenico Ruiu, and the personal exhibition of illustrator Toni Demuro. Also on the programme are the exhibitions “Suber – cork between design and sustainability“, as part of the project “Suarì – from cork an ethical and global project of sustainable development”, and “La via dell’acqua – dal progetto all’opera” in collaboration with CEAS Tempio.
***
Opening the rich 2025 programme will be Pastorello with an exhibition entitled ‘Calligrafie‘. Giovanni Manunta, aka Pastorello, is one of the most capable and decisive artists on the contemporary art scene in Sardinia. A pure painter, in his pre-adamic and psychedelic landscapes, he does not convey messages that are not inherent to the painting practice itself. Hence their semantic ambiguity, their self-referentiality and their being alien and faux-hospitable. For the Museo Organica Pastorello presents a calligraphic rewriting of nature and decides to take nature not so much as a subject but as a language, transforming and isolating organic elements into visual signs that lead back to writing, rhythm and communication. Through the medium of painting, the artist offers a metaphysical reading of the natural world: ancestral trees in timeless forests, worlds perennially in fieri, dominated by seductive and fatal characters, hybrid creatures mixed with history and myths. Ivo Serafino Fenu, curator of the exhibition, writes: “Pastorello’s painting practice is simultaneously an act of listening to and transcribing the living world, and each of his works, like primitive writing, becomes an instrument to connect the human and the natural, revealing a secret order beneath the surface of the visible. In an era of environmental disconnection, recovering this vision also means imagining a new form of balance, where the sign, like man, does not dominate nature but interprets it, rethinks it and transcribes it in beautiful form: rewriting nature is a magical act, an act of responsibility, an act of love but, at times, it can also be a piercing cry of alarm, because the limit between idyll and apocalypse is very subtle”.
Giovanni Manunta (aka Pastorello) was born in Sassari in 1967. He attended the Sassari Art Institute and the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. He lives in Sassari. Pastorello’s painting is a transversal, ambiguous and depressing painting, citationist but cultured, steeped in suggestions of the Nordic 16th century, from Dürer to Altdorfer, passing through Hieronymus Bosch and his gardens of delights, of whirling and ‘sublime’ post-romantic or virtual apocalyptic visions. He has been exhibiting since 1989 in solo and group exhibitions. Among the most important are: “Nel bosco”, Galleria Withe Project, Pescara 2005; “Biennale Sardegna”, Masedu arte contemporanea, Sassari 2011; “Unnatürlich”, Pirandello Berlin, Berlin 2012; – “Come Pittura”, Galleria Colombo, Milan 2013; “I giardini dell’Eden”, Pinacoteca C. Contini, Oristano 2014; “Kolossòi. Pastorello nell’Isola dei Giganti”, Foro Boario, Oristano 2024
Alongside Pastorello’s exhibition, the exhibition ‘Existential Geometries‘ by photographer Francesco Cubeddu will be on display on 1 June. A paraglider and paramotor pilot, he deals with aerial photography with a particular predilection for archaeological sites and the island’s territory in general. Although he does not consider himself an artist, he achieves, with his photographic images, aesthetic results of a poetic poignancy capable of concretising and giving measure to that dream called Sardinia. Francesco Cubeddu flies over the land lightly and captures images that transcend their photographic origin and, thanks to a privileged perspective, acquire a tactile and pictorial appearance of incomparable suggestion: the photographer’s attentive eye is able to identify those textures of the land that give life to a disorienting and deliberately ambiguous visual quest. They are reeds and rice paddies, luxuriant citrus groves and parched wheat fields, freshly ploughed land and uncultivated areas marked by rare rocky outcrops or quilted with Mediterranean shrubs, pools of limestone water or expanses of salt with dazzling whiteness. Curator Ivo Serafino Fenu writes: “It would be reductive to confine these images to the sphere of nature photography, albeit of high quality, because each photogram takes on visual values that go beyond mere objective data and rather touch upon the territories of the noblest aniconic art, with its meditated relationships between chromatic backgrounds, its inlays of forms and its interweaving of lines whose resonances are amplified in the deep spaces of the interior more than in the appearance of the senses.
Francesco Cubeddu was born in Seneghe (OR) in 1956. An excursionist, paraglider and paramotor pilot since 1992, he has been involved in aerial photography with a particular predilection for archaeological sites and the Sardinian territory. He has collaborated, with articles and photos, with Delta & Parapendio from 1994 to 2006; with ‘In Sardegna’, a periodical on tourism, environment and culture, since 1994; and with ‘Volo Libero’ and ‘Hobby Volo’.
The calendar of events at Spazio CEDAP is accompanied by a rich programme of activities in the Bosco di Curadureddu where the Museo Organica is located. Between the summer and autumn of 2025 , new works by Giusy Calia, Marcello Cinque, Valentina Daga, Antonello Fresu and Alex Pinna will be realised, which will enrich the Curadureddu ‘Paths of Art’ composed of works by artists who pay special attention to the world of nature and environmental issues. In addition, the new route of site-specific works will be inaugurated in the locality of Vallicciola, along the Via delle Acque del Limbara with interventions by: Pietruccia Bassu, Eleonora Desole, Heart Studio, Daniela and Francesca Manca, Mauro Morittu, Gianni Nieddu, Igino Panzino, and Antonella Spanu as part of the project ‘Acquamontana – percorsi di sostenibilità tra arte, acqua e natura lungo la via delle acque’ (Acquamontana – sustainability paths between art, water and nature along the waterway), realised with the support of the Sardinian Region – Department for the Defence of the Environment.
At the same time as the realisation of each work, the programme includes a series of dedicated events, workshops and meetings with the artists, which will allow the public to get to know the project and its protagonists more closely; guided tours and cultural treks to discover the Museum and the specificities and naturalistic peculiarities of the Limbara Park in the company of art critics, naturalists and experts on flora and fauna.
Many side events, concerts, musical performances and creative workshops are scheduled in the forest, linked to regional and national music, art and territory festivals and circuits in collaboration with local artists and associations.
The following will also be guests of the Museo Organica: the Bardunfula Festival, the Bookolica Festival, the Ironik Festival, the OndeSonore International Guitar Festival and the Girovagando Festival, which will offer a stage of their programming in the setting of Curadureddu.
In October, the Museo Organica joins the 21st Amaci Contemporary Day and the ‘CEAS Open‘ initiative on the occasion of the day promoting the INFEAS network – Information, Training and Education for the Environment and Sustainability – which provides workshops for the dissemination of good environmental practices.
All Organica events are held on the slopes of Mount Limbara, near Tempio Pausania: in the Curadureddu forest and at the CEDAP – Centre for Education and Documentation on the Environment and Landscape.
The CEDAP space has two exhibition rooms, one dedicated to contemporary art and the other to photography, and is also an information point for hiking, environmental and cultural activities in the area.
Guided tours of the Museum of Environmental Art can be organised for small groups and schools by appointment.
The locality can be reached from Tempio, Olbia and Sassari along the SS 392 state road, and then on foot along one of the evocative paths that lead into the Limbara forests.
Organica – museum of environmental art in the Limbara Park is a project of the cultural association tramedarte with artistic direction by Giannella Demuro and realised in collaboration with the Municipality of Tempio Pausania, the MIC – General Direction for Education, Research and Cultural Institutes, the Foundation of Sardinia, the Region of Sardinia, the FAI – Italian Environmental Fund, the Chamber of Commerce of Sassari – Salude & Trigu, Fo.Re.S.T.A.S., the Italian Touring Club, the DECA Pro Master’s degree course at the University of Sassari, the Sassari Academy of Fine Arts ‘Mario Sironi’, cultural associations and partners Cantina Gallura, Gallura Mia srl, Giua abbigliamento, Hotel Pausania Inn, La Baita Limbara.
* * *
city: Tempio Pausania (SS)
location: Monte Limbara | locality Curadureddu / CEDAP – Centro di Educazione e Documentazione Ambientale e Paesaggistica del Limbara (SS 392 Tempio-Oschiri)
INFO
cell. 339 590 6900 | info@organicamuseo.it
tramedarte
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/organicamuseo
Insta https://www.instagram.com/organicamuseo
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEx7M8G5Gqr14tf0-t73Jg
Press kit: link to Google Drive
