gothicNetwork.org

Soon after the marvellous exhibition focussing entirely on donated Origami by artists and fashion designers such as Renato Balestra auctioned at the Centrale Montemartini for the Japanese cause, the Margutta RistorArte run by Tina and Claudio Vannini, which appears to champion causes, hosted a photographic exhibition From Trauma To Life by Alessia Cerqua, an architecture graduate-turned-photographer teaching at the Experimental Photography Centre ‘Ansel Adams’.

Curated by Francesca Barbi Marinetti, the theme focussed on animals in horrific situations, sequestered from the wild or denied freedom and subjected to maltreatment in domestic and professional settings who have been rescued and given a new life by LAV through placement or relocation in environs conducive to their wellbeing, namely specialised recovery centres.

Animal lovers and welfarists thronged at the immensely successful opening to view tigers extricated from a circus that held them captive, lab-born macques who have never seen their native tropical forests snatched from scientific laboratories; handsize primates saved from being butchered on the dissection table and experimented with in the name of science; bears and monkeys forced to dance and perform like humans, animals in circuses starved or brutally punished to deliver the goods and.stray dogs and cats, owls and parrots in various tragic predicaments.

In this series of stark black and white stills, poised and contemplative or inquisitive and purposeful, the artist has succeeded in capturing moments that reveal the animal in question at its most expressive, looking hurt, indignant, furious, offended, insulted, protesting or simply wearing the face of a victim. From photographs intent on depicting the critical phase, the move to postrelease expressions of relief in relocated settings was portrayed as the contrast a new lease of life must be.

The feats of the lemurs from Madagascar with their bright brilliant expressive eyes and high arched tail like a rainbow occupying half the photo’s sky was among the pictures that stylistically impressed me. The new start at the recovery centres near Rome each specialised in their set species may or mayn’t be the answer but it is a move forward as the animals have a home halfway between the wild, their natural habitat and the city. While it may look to some as though these pictures were deliberately designed to give only one side of the picture for there might be instances of the same creatures looking happier, wellfed and ecstatic on other occasions, they nevertheless managed to project the viewpoint of LAV and the organisers. While I don’t like exhibitions with messages on principle, the Alessia Cerqua works spoke for themselves with an intensity through the clear lines and contrasts of B&W photography. This exhibition is on until midSeptember in a setting that hosts dinners, Sunday Brunches and much more.

Mysterious Metamorphoses

A garden setting and a new exhibition space ensconced in a corner! A trio performing a blend of the old and new and Casale Del Giglio serving their excellent wines. It was a pleasant change from the ordinary to stroll along one of Rome’s artladen avenues and arrive at Daniele Catalli’s one man show entitled Mirabolante Esposizione di Metamorfosi (Astounding Exposition of Metamorphoses) in EmmeOtto Next, one of the most enterprising small-scale exhibition spaces in the heart of the centro.

In a combination of as natural a setting as is possible in a city and nature-related art forms, the two level plan exhibition stemming from an artistic concept inherent in Ovid’s Metamorphosis worked to perfection. The theme, that of myths of mutability in vegetables and minerals, was welltreated in 44 stylised graphic creations on scratchboard that intrigued and enthralled the viewer as they changed from perspective to perspective, expounding Ovidian myths of metamorphoses in vegetables and minerals, water and rock, through the various defined ages in time, all yoked to the contemporary chariot that moved and stimulated the mind through the power of the artist’s imagination.

As I stroll the interplay of natural light on the works results in a play on the theme of transformation, triggering its own effects in line with and contrary to what the artist may have intended, which goes in his favour in the end. Large and small cohabit the same artistic space. A site specific installation with its plexiglasslayers is viewable from all sides.

The many facets of transparency come into play as sensations are evoked when we see through the images suspended in time, afloat in space, transfixed in sea, or mesmerised on land petrified as a fossil. Transfiguration, metamorphosis is deeply sensed as interpretations of symbols and signs minute.of classic myths Greek and Roman in a blend of ancient and modern flavours see antiquity delivered in a contemporary fashion. Classical allusions are hinted at, natural wonders overpower with their beauty in miniature. Then pencilled figures, trees, leaves, vertical forms look ghostly viewed through transparent layers.

At a variance from your impression at first sight, with each in-depth exploration the eye intercepts its own subjective visions partial or complete that fix the floating apparitions in the mind in the manner of a direct experience. Through his many-layered visions expertise, the graphic artist (also an accomplished illustrator and setdesigner) has succeeded in both distancing and drawing close the viewer and enfolding him in his created world. Lucio Villani, Egidio Marchitelli and Marco Del Greco with their music repertoire that incorporated the classical and the popular added pleasant dimensions to this opening.