WHEN IN ROME

AlbumArte

presents

WHEN IN ROME

The project is funded by Regione Lazio through the Lazio Contemporaneo 2022 public notice 

With the contribution of euro: 42,814.86 (forty-two thousand eight hundred and fourteen.86)

CUP F88D24000050009

Artists:

Verdiana Bove, Guglielmo Maggini, Pietro Moretti, Caterina Sammartino, Adelisa Selimbašić

travelling project with an exhibition in Rome and Bologna, debates and meetings in Florence, Milan, Naples, Turin and Venice

Project direction by Cristina Cobianchi Exhibition curated by Adriana Polveroni

Project co-ordinator Mattia Cassalini Assistant and cultural mediator Elena Biani

Events programmation:

Project presentation preview at: Venice Accademy of Fine Arts |10 June 2024

Exhibitions:

Rome, AlbumArte | via Flaminia 122 – Rome | 18 November 2024 – 4 January 2025 | Tuesday to Saturday 15.00 – 19.00 | Free entrance

Bologna, Adiacenze |vicolo dello Spirito Santo 1/b – Bologna | 9 – 23 January 2025 | Tuesday to Saturday 16.00 – 20.00 | Free entrance

Meetings and debates: Milan, Casa degli Artisti, Thursday 7 November; Florence, Toast Project Space, Thursday 5 December 2024; Turin, Mucho Mas!, Thursday 16 January 2025; Naples, Quartiere intelligente – Zona Rosa, Thursday 23 January 2025

Informations: +390624402941 | info@albumarte.org | www.albumarte.org

The travelling project When in Rome funded by Regione Lazio through the Lazio Contemporaneo 2022 public notice, will be realised in seven Italian cities in collaboration with Adiacenze Bologna and Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, Accademia di Belle Arti di Frosinone, RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts, Casa degli Artisti Milan, Mucho Mas! Turin, Toast Project Space Florence, Zona Rosa Naples, CONDOTTO48 Rome.

Previewed at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice on 10 June 2024, When in Rome will include, in addition to the exhibition in Rome from 18 November 2024 to 4 January 2025, in Bologna from 9 to 23 January 2025, a series of debates and confrontations with the public at Casa degli Artisti in Milan, Zona Rosa in Naples, Toast Project Space in Florence, Mucho Mas! in Turin.

When in Rome, the shortened title from When in Rome do as Romans do, is meant to mock that attitude of foreigners who, having arrived in Rome, learn to “do Roman style” seduced by the city’s charm and its customs and is also a tribute to a famous Genesis concert in 2007.

The hart of the project are the results of the survey conducted by Cristina Cobianchi and Adriana Polveroni on young talents under 35 working in Rome, especially in work spaces founded and managed with equally young curators in peripheral areas, in disused factories, former workshops or old garages, disused craft workshops, and who are changing the fabric and artistic ferment of the capital with their open research into the present and the dialogue with several voices.

The exhibition, which adds the subtitle Beyond the boundaries of Skin to the title When in Rome, by Verdiana Bove, Guglielmo Maggini, Pietro Moretti, Caterina Sammartino and Adelisa Selimbašić, presents new and site-specific works that investigate the theme of marginality, understood as the ‘border that separates’, exactly like the skin that delimits the body from the outside and that, at the same time, constitutes the first contact with the surrounding environment, the first possibility of knowledge. Even today, at a time when the body has undergone a radical transformation, placed at the centre of various social and cultural tensions, the skin is what delimits, and thus defines, the body primarily. Each artist involved in the project has his or her own original interpretation of the idea of “skin” and the urge to go “beyond the periphery of the skin”. Beyond, therefore, the given boundaries. Not necessarily to overcome them in a sort of titanic tension, but perhaps to explore them in their marginality, in their being the periphery of a great decentralised body which is the same profound articulation, the inexhaustible alphabet of artistic practices.

The phrase ”Beyond the Boundaries of Skin” signifies the necessity to engage fully in the present, fostering multi-voiced dialogue. Applied to Rome, often viewed as a Great Mother, both revered and damned, the city becomes a vast organism, a privileged site for observation and inquiry, offering new opportunities for artistic expression and new interpretative paths.

Verdiana Bove (Rome, 1996) lives and works in Rome. She is co-founder of the Artist-Run Space CONDOTTO48. She has participated in several group and solo exhibitions in Rome and nationwide. In particular: La Luce abbraccia tutto – Verdiana Bove e Luigi Ghirri, EDDart Palazzo Taverna, Rome (2023), Quando cosa felice cade, Le Nuove Stanze, Arezzo (2023) and Nuove vedute di Roma, Laboratorio KH, Rome (2022). The starting point of her research is family photographs or personal collections, intended as a basis for merging real memories with dreamlike atmospheres.

Guglielmo Maggini (Rome, 1992) holds a degree in architecture and an MA in Visual Arts from UAL – Camberwell college of Arts in London. Exhibitions include: Stairing – permanent installation, Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza (2024); Contrappunti, z2o Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome (2024); Biennale di Gubbio Palazzo Ducale, Gubbio (2023). Guglielmo Maggini’s work takes place on the borderline between installation and sculpture. Characteristic of his work is an art in transit from one world to another, where space is understood as plastic volume. Materials such as clay and synthetic materials such as rubbers, resins and more generally the world of plastic polymers con-fuse in a sensitive research on the relationship between life and death, through a journey between historical and personal memory.

Pietro Moretti (Rome, 1996) lives and works in Berlin after obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London. His recent solo and group exhibitions include: Il faló dei gonfiabili, Collezione Iannaccone, Milan (2023); Le storture del cactus, Galleria Doris Ghetta, Milan (2023); Pittura Italiana Oggi, Triennale, Milan (2023); Sensing painting, Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2023). Many of Moretti’s pictorial narratives frame adolescence, group rituals, topical moments that are fixed in the memory that speaks of painting as a “tool for focusing on reality, between memories and imagination”.

Caterina Sammartino (Rome, 1997) graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and is co-founder of the Artist-Run Space CONDOTTO48. Her latest exhibitions include: The Sun at Its Zenith, ERA Gallery, Milan (2024); Shaping grace and disquiet, ERA Gallery, Milan (2024); L’Ombra Lunga, Palazzo Rospigliosi, Zagarolo (2024); RESENTI, Palazzo Lucarini, Trevi (2023); Botanica, EDDart, Rome (2022); VII Biennale di Viterbo Arte Contemporanea, Viterbo (2022); Materia Nova – Roma nuove generazioni a confronto, Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma (2021). In her work, she prefers installations, using materials from natural origin, but also obsolete objects from everyday life, with a view to connecting with her surroundings, which finds its expression in works made of hemp and cotton, and in performative actions with a strong symbolic and relational charge. Adelisa Selimbašić (Malsch Kreis Karlsruhe-Germany, 1996) lives and works between Milan and New York. She is an Italian-Bosnian artist who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. Her solo exhibitions include: Why is it so difficult to declare oneself?, Galleria IPERCUBO, Milan (2023); Beacon in the Bowery- Azuki Furuya, Fridman gallery, New York, USA (2023); her group exhibitions include: Soft Focus, Bradley Ertaskiran gallery, Montreal (2024); An Avarage Comet, Harkawik gallery, New York (2024). It is worth mentioning her participation in Fountainhead residency in Miami, USA (2023). Her works are predominantly full-length portraits of bodies or faces, enlarged portions of seemingly reassuring, often joyful, young women, portrayed exclusively among themselves, in a female universe whose decoding is left to the viewer.