Arne Quinze. Ceramorphia | I'm a Gardener

Quinze Iamgardener, 2026, OCA Oasy Contemporary Art and Architecture ©Mattia Marasco

On April 25th, 2026, OCA – Oasy Contemporary Art and Architecture reopens to the public. Over the past three years, this Oasi Dynamo project has brought contemporary art and architecture to the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, offering an immersive route through nature that combines outdoor installations by international artists with an exhibition space dedicated to art and photography. Under the artistic direction of Emanuele Montibeller, OCA has grown year by year, offering a unique experience in which artworks engage in dialogue with the surrounding landscape - woods, clearings, and ridgelines - inviting visitors to discover nature not as a backdrop, but as an active presence.

In this ever-changing landscape, the permanent route is neither a conventional open-air museum nor a sculpture park. It is a unified curatorial project in which each intervention responds to the site and reshapes the way it is perceived.

For the 2026 season, OCA welcomes a new international presence: Belgian artist Arne Quinze, who brings Ceramorphia to Oasi Dynamo, adding a new chapter to the outdoor route, and presents his solo exhibition I'm a Gardener in the gallery, exploring his work on the relationship between humans and biodiversity.

Arne Quinze at OCA

The installation Ceramorphia by Arne Quinze, already presented at the 2024 Venice Biennale, offers a profound dialogue with the landscape of the Pistoiese Apennines: rather than standing apart as a self-contained object, it acts as a catalyst for reflection, engaging closely with its surroundings, never imposing itself, yet never simply blending in.

The ceramic forms suggest an "other nature": not a reproduction of the natural world, but a reinterpretation of it. Stems, shoots, and organic growths appear charged with intention, subtly shifting the logic we usually associate with them.
Ceramorphia does not aim to represent nature; instead, it explores how we perceive and transform it. In doing so, it invites reflection on a defining paradox of our time: never has humanity had such a profound impact on natural systems, and yet never has it felt so far removed from them.... read the rest of the article»

The solo exhibition held concurrently, I'm a Gardener, is set up in OCA's exhibition space and features a selection of paintings and works on canvas that explore the relationship between humans and nature. The surfaces, alive with chromatic tension and dynamic layering, do not depict the landscape; they convey its vital energy, growth, collisions, and metamorphosis. Painting and installation emerge as complementary expressions of the same creative core: an investigation into life's generative force and the need to restore balance and diversity to spaces inhabited by humans.

An internationally renowned artist, Quinze has developed a coherent body of work examining the dialogue between nature and human-altered space. After beginning in the graffiti art scene in the 1980s, his practice evolved through large-scale installations and painting series presented in museums and international venues. Central to his work is the wildflower garden surrounding his studio in Belgium, a living laboratory he has observed for over thirty years according to its own autonomous logic. This daily immersion in biodiversity has informed a practice that finds an ideal context in OCA, enabling a direct dialogue with the landscape.

I'm a Gardener will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Metilene.

The Path through the Reserve

With the addition of Arne Quinze's work, OCA's route through the reserve gains a new international presence, reinforcing the project's dynamic and evolving character.

The walk through woods and clearings offers encounters with artworks that interact with the landscape in unexpected ways. Kengo Kuma's Dynamo Pavilion weaves among the plants like a gust of wind, while Nella terra il cielo by Mariangela Gualtieri and Michele De Lucchi combines poetry and architecture in a meditation on myth and memory. Further along, Matteo Thun's Fratelli Tutti invites contemplation through circular arrangements of local stone monoliths, symbolizing unity and the cyclical nature of life. Quayola's Erosions, composed of lava stone blocks shaped by generative algorithms, highlights the tension between natural force and technological intervention, while Alejandro Aravena's Self-regulation transforms a pre-existing structure into an invitation to rethink the way we inhabit space. The path is completed by David Svensson's Home of the World and Pascale Marthine Tayou's colorful Plastic Bags, now integral to OCA's permanent collection.

This summer, the project will be further enriched with two new works. The collective fuse* will present Vanishing Horizon, a corten steel installation that evokes the extreme conditions of black holes and the relationship between what can be observed and what lies beyond. The work materializes light trajectories near these phenomena, creating a walkable space that invites visitors to confront the threshold between the knowable and the unimaginable.

Complementing this cosmic dimension, Stefano Boeri's new work Deus Sive Natura – What I Believe will be unveiled, created to mark the eight-hundredth anniversary of Saint Francis of Assisi's death. The installation consists of a ten-meter-long Carrara white marble kneeler, oriented toward the horizon, integrated into the Apennine landscape as an invitation to contemplation. It is not a monument, but a minimal, universal gesture: kneeling before nature, acknowledging it as a counterpart, and transforming it into a pantheistic temple. The project draws inspiration from Saint Francis' Canticle of the Creatures, J.G. Ballard's secular credo What I Believe, and, more broadly, Spinozist pantheism, in which God and the Universe are conceived as the same immanent and necessary substance.

Under Montibeller's artistic direction, OCA continues to evolve as a living organism: each new installation reshapes the rhythm of the route, multiplies the interactions between artwork and landscape, and strengthens the immersive experience that defines the project.

A member of the Grandi Giardini Italiani network, OCA will be open to visitors from April 25th to November 1st, 2026, Thursday through Sunday, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. During August, visits will also be possible on Wednesdays at the same hours. Entry to the exhibition is free, while the guided path through the park costs €20 (free for children up to age 10) and is available by reservation only. The full schedule is available at: www.oasycontemporaryart.com.

At the Visitors Center, the Casa Luigi bistro will operate by reservation, offering high-quality culinary experiences. Visitors may dine there or enjoy the lawn and outdoor spaces.