“We want to bring movement and comparison back to the centre,” says Palma Costabile, architect, who in 2016 founded a contemporary art gallery where protagonists of the sector play with minimal interior design, which in turn plays with the excitement that characterizes the heart of central Rome.
The galleries developed over the years to constitute a real Capitoline art district: Via Angelo Poliziano 4-6, 28, 32-34, 36 and Via Merulana 220. Until the construction, in September 2023, of a link that expands the scope to the Castelli Romani with the gallery of Monte Porzio Catone, managed, directed and curated by Valeria Rufini Ferranti. Thus, the Medina Art Gallery group is today a space of discovery through exhibitions, exhibitions, installations and vernissages of painters, sculptors, photographers and designers.
In the ecosystem, lasting work in the path of mutual growth with some artists is of fundamental importance: structured, profound, strategic and broad-spectrum work. The cornerstone of this journey is the permanent exhibition in the gallery in Via Angelo Poliziano 28, with the dreamlike-marine landscapes of Alessandro Trani, the constantly changing traces of Fabio Cicuto and the sinuous sculptures of Elvino Motti.
“I love painting uncontaminated nature and my favorite element is the sea, an opportunity for travel and reflection”: Alessandro Trani grew up in the important Capitoline associations “Cento painters of Via Margutta” and “Art Studio Tre”. Since 2006 he has presented the oil works of the "i mari di Trani" series to then evolve in 2015 into a mixed technique that develops the "Alfa, Omega and the primordial paradises" series.
The artist depicts a world suspended between reality and imagination. Landscapes have no place or time, the horizon is suspended between sky and earth. The extraordinary ability to use color with extreme naturalness projects the work towards different levels of reading, to interact with the dream universe. The sea, in its infinite nuances, escapes representation to project itself into a world that does not need to be seen, but felt. The painted feelings merge on the canvas and dissolve the boundary between reality and dream. Pink, blue and white are tools to transport the viewer into a peaceful present, along scenarios of internal journeys towards the search for infinity. The freedom generated, the light of a sea that lives in memories and imagination, induce deep feeling. And the emotional transport distances us from chaotic everyday life by focusing on harmony. Still. The visionary representations and the delicate use of the brush generate a light painting, capable of interacting with the complexity of the human psyche. A symbolist painting, where each brushstroke refers to another. The dialogue between sea and sky, which freely lose themselves in the meanders of the unlimited, triggers an emotional vortex in which to get lost.
“My works - says Fabio Cicuto - try to materialize a déjà-vu, a sort of unexpected emotion, a poetic reality like the vision of falling in love, as if everything had already happened, but had yet to happen and even the last drop of tar goes into the right place": artist and musician, after an intense musical activity in the Eighties and Nineties between Rome and London, approaches the world of Art with the expressions of the finite and the human psyche, protagonists of his Work. Published in many important editorial projects, national exhibitions and international events, he participates in Expo Milano 2015, exhibits at the Chiostro del Bramante and his works are present in exhibitions around the world alongside Mario Schifano, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Shepard Fairey and other masters of the twentieth century and contemporary art.
Fabio Cicuto's art studies the human psyche, the tar that blends with the signs of experience refers to the depths of the soul and the micro-finities of the unconscious. The fragmentation of the individual and the emotional precariousness of the hyper-dynamic and liquid contemporary reality are treated by Cicuto's canvases which, reaching the territory of psychoanalysis, stimulates in the public the experience of the encounter with one's inner self. The traces of tar are torn, interrupted by white. The complexity of the soul along a path of symbols: tutelary deities to protect human frailty. The contemplation of the works outlines a story that reveals the most velvety and hidden parts that contemporary everyday life suffocates in the appearance of artificial light.
The introspective level on which the story told by the artist develops outlines a language that speaks through the gestures of emotions. Through the discontinuous use of tar that interacts with a white surface, the shapes tell of the "getting dirty" necessary to access the most vulnerable part of the mind. The universe of emotions, memories, suggestions, evokes an experience to cling to in order to recognize oneself. The search for balance and the frenzy of an alienating reality travel until they meet in an Art based on the power of matter. It is precisely the materiality that projects Cicuto into the world of the informal, where the vehemence of the gesture and the ambiguity of the language refer to a plurality of meanings. And therefore art, through the use of matter, unravels unresolved knots and deals directly with the public's sensations.
Elvino Motti fuses art and nature: in the wonderful setting of Lake Como, he works on the "sculpture of the territory" project. He studied at the Cantù Art Institute and at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. Having perfected his sculptural techniques, in 1975 he obtained his first awards at the "Artisti Oggi" international contemporary art award in Milan and exhibited in numerous Italian and foreign locations: from the United States to Dubai, from London to Dubrovnik. He has created various "Landscape" installations, enhancing prestigious Italian public spaces.
His sculptural art places the tactile element at the center. The materials, from black Varenna marble to alabaster to methacrylate, enhance the properties of the work: plays of light highlight the transparencies of the sculptures, as if it were possible to distinguish their soul. And the work becomes dynamic, almost breaking down and then being rebuilt and reinterpreted by the public in an ever new way.
Motti's art is animated, shadows and lights create a dialectical game. The geometric figures offer themselves not only in their exteriority, but in their intrinsic essence: the spirit that manages to generate an intimate energy capable of escaping cold logic. The sculpture offers itself totally, becoming a soul as well as a body. The sinuosity of the elements produces changing optical effects, depending on the point of view, so that the shapes appear and then vanish, creating at the same time an effect of continuous ascent and amazement.
