Francesco Mariotti

Conceptual, Intermedial

The Italian Swiss Francesco Mariotti was born in 1943 in Bern. He grew up in Lima/Peru and studied art in Paris and Hamburg, where he later met Klaus Geldmacher. The first project of the artist and the artist couple Geldmacher/Mariotti was the spectacular performance at documenta 4 in Kassel in 1968, where the two artists have exhibited a big, interactive light sound cube, which was activated through keyboard to rock music. The unique idea of publishing an "art share" (an edition) was to finance this project.

After this appearance at the documenta 4, the two artists went separate ways. Mariotti went to Lima/Peru and was guest lecturer at the College of art there for many years. After his return, he was general secretary of the videoart festival Locarno until 1987. Since 1987, Francesco Mariotti lives and works as a freelance artist in Zurich. In 1989 het launched a large-scale project together with Klaus Geldmacher: "Das Glühwürmchen Projekt 1989-2005" (firefly project 1989-2005). For a long time Francesco Mariotti deals and pursues with an almost scientific meticulousness, that these small beings of light, the fireflies, of which thousands lit the warm summer evenings, have almost entirely disappeared by the harsh environmental conditions. As a reaction of this, the artist restores the poetry of the light of the fireflies in a different form in nature by his "hybrid gardens", which he has already installed all over the world. He transformes the industrial disposable products, PET bottles, in an environment resistant idea of this lost species of glow worms.

In 1999, Francesco Mariotti was Secretary of the network of foreign persons engaged in the cultural sector in Helvetia.

Since 1968 he exhibited in many exhibitions, festivals and biennales in the country and abroad. In the year 2007 we showed his "Hybrid gardens" in our rooms in Cologne and the outdoor installation "Leaves excuses of light" on the grounds of the Gallery Wasserwerk.Galerie Lange in Siegburg, Germany.

His quantum flower Ballet was shown at "Lichtberlin" in the Berlin Tiergarten; he exhibited the work "Enclave" in Turin and on the Symposium Lindabrunn (A).