The art of Maddalena Ambrosio is fundamentally introspective in character. The artist, questioning herself about her own personal doubts and the state of insecurity and fear, and finding answers to those problems, reveals the critical points in modern society. The balance between man and the order of nature is one of the conditio sine qua non for the sustainable development of the planet Earth, while the disruption of that balance due to human carelessness has as its inevitable consequence the emergence of destructive events of vast proportions, of cataclysms, like earthquakes, tidal waves and tornados. Artists, sensitive to the phenomena and anomalies of society, are always ready to foreshadow what the future holds for man. Ecology has been present in artistic expression since the 1960s; this presence is displayed in the direct interaction with the environment and with the relationship between nature and the artificial world of culture. Maddalena Ambrosio brings her personal contribution to the long line of ecology-related art, which has developed from late modern concepts to the present post-modern phenomena.

The artists of Land art have created surroundings and installations in nature, and the materials and characteristics of the land and landscape are the primary elements of those creations. The forms of nature for Maddalena Ambrosio are basic expressive means, which nevertheless combine with products of high technology and the world of mass culture. In her works ("Affetti personali") the artist maintains the memory of harmony and logic in natural growth and development. Removing from the natural environment elements like soil, flowers and foliage and placing them in transparent portable containers, she gives them an aura of rare and precious substances, of inestimable value. In the second group of works-packaging Maddalena Ambrosio covers ready-made objects, such as an automobile, with organic substances, like moss, which she has taken from nature. In the tradition of American and European avant-garde, Man Ray and Marchel Duchamp, in packaging and wrapping objects, proposed an ironic approach towards works of art and social institutions. Starting from this concept, Christo (Javacheff) has exasperated the act of packaging to the point of making it a cold empty action, with which he has shown that any object can be wrapped and thus called a work of art. The art of Maddalena Ambrosio presents traces of these actions, but with a new value, in as much as the divulgation of the semantic field of the object being wrapped, the diffusion of the meaning of the material with which it is wrapped, and the ecological message are important aspects of the work. The automobile, an invention of the technologic al revolution, pollutes and degrades the environment; Maddalena Ambrosio covers and petrifies it with a plant structure to turn it into an "Eco-car", an object of aesthetic experience. The primary meaning and function of the object wrapped and placed in an expositive space moves into the compass of a work of art, while the union of elements taken from different contexts (natural and technological) creates a structure drenched in new meanings.

In the works entitled Formato "salva-spazio" the artist constructs a section of natural environment where monoliths covered in fake leaves and fruit are arranged. Maddalena Ambrosio takes up the logic of natural growth and development, but modifies it, on the one hand using synthetic materials (polyurethane and plastic), and on the other hand with an arrangement in a context that is totally artificial, the expositive environment of a gallery. In this way a double model of simulation is realized: the synthetic material appears natural, while the surrounding artificial space accentuates the removal from a natural context. The model on display of artificially created nature is a painful vade mecum of the destruction and slow disappearance of the universe and dynamic vital forces.

Text by Natasa Ivancevic