Visitors to Isola Madre, Stresa, on Lake Maggiore may be startled this summer to find a few transformations in the form of installations and sculptures by the artist Velasco Vitali, including a golden skeletral tree jutting out from the water and a pack of stylized hounds on the steps of Palazzo Borromeo. Other sculptures have been placed in the grounds of the Grand Hotel Majestic of Verbania.

The exhibition, which continues until the 21 October 2012, is entitled Red Forest and is inspired by the pine wood of Chernobyl, transformed after the nuclear disaster in the 1980s.