Imposing gorillas that reach three meters in height, groups of chimpanzees and baboons and an orangutan: there are 14 monumental sculptures scattered among the green areas of the Castle of Brescia, where, between 1912 and 1988, the Zoological Garden was also located . We are talking about a new nucleus of unpublished works in bronze created by the sculptor Davide Rivalta (Bologna, 1974) specifically for the exhibition Dreams of glory, which from 26 May to 7 January 2024 invites the public to take an open-air walk to discover a one of the most fascinating fortified complexes in Italy, second largest in Europe.

Promoted by the Municipality of Brescia, the Brescia Museum Foundation and Alleanza Cultura, and created in collaboration with the XVII edition of Meccaniche della Meraviglia – a Brescian event that has been bringing site-specific exhibitions to places usually closed to the public for almost twenty years – the exhibition, curated by by Davide Ferri, marks an important stage in the career of the Bolognese artist.

Dreams of glory establishes for Rivalta a link with the beginning of his career as an artist, in which the gorillas – the first series of animals made in bronze – are remodeled after twenty years, a broad time frame, within which it is possible to recognize the evolution of his sculpture. The works reproduce animals encountered and photographed by the artist in parks and zoological gardens: captive bodies, uprooted from their natural environment, to which Rivalta restores freedom, dignity and life in a new context, evoking a distant and wild landscape, the image of a new world, in which the man-made landscape becomes the territory of the animal.