Curated by Michela Becchis and Nicoletta Provenzano
Promoted by Assessorato alla Cultura di Roma Capitale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo. Produced by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo in collaboration with Archivio Celestino
The exhibition is a reflection and an open investigation into the type of perception and the degree ofawareness that our civilization has towards animals and animality. Since his debut in the 1980s, the artist has always focused his work on the relationship between man and the environment. In this exhibition he uses his photographic gaze filtered by history, myth and contemporaneity to represent his vision of the animal world, the majesty and tenacity of animals, their suffering and pride. The images, ideally assumed as sacred icons, aim to induce in the viewer a purifying catharsis in close dialogue with the history of the Slaughterhouse, now sublimated in the museum. The exhibition itinerary presents some large-format photographic portraits dedicated to the world of bovids and equines, a nucleus of four interpretations of the artist of historical photographs from the late nineteenth century of Conte Primoli dedicated to the Slaughterhouse, enriched by the heritage documentary inscriptions of the Testaccio area owned by the Capitoline Archives.
The exhibition continues the dialogue between sculpture and photography with the Mnemosyne series – in reference to the Atlas of Memory and the Pathosformel by Aby Warburg – and with the series of photographic elaborations derived from classical sculptures photographed in national and international museums. Both series retrace the movements and forms of zoomorphic subjects, derived from nature and classical antiquity, tracing a sort of sentimental biography and at the same time a map of a civilization in a sacred relationship with the animal figure. The last photographic series, including the human figure, bears witness to a close, yet complex and perhaps contradictory, relationship between the human animal and animality. The artist's visual and in some ways visionary ability reveals the difficulty of a knowledge of the non-human animal world which, although not exhaustive, aspires to the creation of a balance, not only aesthetic, but also ethical. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Tiburtini.