From 15 October to 21 November 2026, Basile Contemporary presents Chronicles of the Interval, Nicola Bertellotti’s first solo exhibition in Rome. The photographer’s artistic research explores the fascination of abandoned places, the memory embedded in architecture, and the suspended dimension of time.
Curated by Rosa Basile, the exhibition brings together thirteen photographic works, many of them previously unseen, taking visitors on a journey through forgotten environments, uninhabited residences, silent theatres, and architectural spaces that preserve traces of lives long gone.
The exhibition’s title encapsulates the essence of the artist’s research: the interval is that undefined moment separating what a place once was from what it will become, a temporal space in which human presence has faded, yet its memory continues to manifest itself through objects, surfaces, and architectural structures.
In Bertellotti’s photographs, abandonment does not signify an ending. On the contrary, it marks the beginning of a new condition, in which buildings seem to shed their original purpose and acquire a different identity. These are places that no longer fully belong to the past but have yet to find their place in the present. Spaces in waiting, suspended between preservation and dissolution, where time itself becomes the central protagonist.
Through a rigorous and deeply evocative photographic language, Bertellotti explores these territories of transition, restoring dignity and beauty to what contemporary society tends to forget. His attention rests on the traces left by human beings, the geometry of interiors, surfaces marked by wear, and details that bear witness to the slow and inexorable passage of time.
Natural light plays a fundamental role in the construction of his images. Filtering through windows, doors, and openings, it illuminates environments that have lost their everyday function, revealing hidden details and transforming dust, shadows, and deteriorating materials into elements of visual compositions of extraordinary intensity.
This is not simply an attempt to document buildings in ruins or nostalgically celebrate a lost past. Rather, photography becomes a means of investigating the relationship between presence and absence, memory and oblivion, the fragility of human constructions and the persistence of the stories they contain.
Each image suggests a possible narrative while leaving viewers free to imagine what may have happened. Empty rooms seem inhabited by invisible presences: the memory of a conversation, the movement of a figure, the sound of footsteps along a corridor, the life that once animated those spaces. It is precisely this tension between what is visible and what can only be evoked that gives the photographs their distinctive expressive power.
The absence of people, a recurring element in Bertellotti’s research, does not therefore imply an absence of humanity. On the contrary, it heightens its perception. The photographed spaces indirectly tell the stories of those who passed through them, the aspirations of those who built them, and the historical and social transformations that shaped their destinies.
In this sense, Chronicles of the Interval also offers a reflection on our relationship with architectural and cultural heritage. Abandoned buildings are not merely remnants of a past to be recovered or preserved, but entities in constant transformation, capable of generating new meanings through the simple passage of time.
The artist’s photographic research invites us to reconsider the very concept of beauty. Moving beyond ideals of perfection and wholeness, Bertellotti discovers a particular harmony in cracks, worn surfaces, peeling plaster, and architectural elements that withstand the effects of time. What is normally perceived as decay thus acquires a poetic dimension, revealing a fragile, silent, and profoundly authentic beauty.
The exhibition reflects the cultural vision of Basile Contemporary, a gallery founded by Rosa Basile in the heart of Rome, just steps from Piazza Navona, with the aim of creating opportunities for encounters and dialogue between artists and audiences, promoting an experience of contemporary art that combines depth of research with emotional immediacy.
The decision to present Nicola Bertellotti’s first solo exhibition in Rome confirms the gallery’s commitment to artistic languages capable of questioning the present through original perspectives, offering visitors not only an aesthetic experience but also an opportunity for reflection.
In a city like Rome, where the relationship between past and present is an essential component of its urban identity, Bertellotti’s photographs acquire particular resonance. The Italian capital is itself a place of historical layers, transformations, and enduring presences, where architecture from different eras coexists and continues to engage in dialogue with contemporary life.
Chronicles of the Interval therefore invites us to observe time from a different perspective, recognising that even what appears motionless continues to change, and that even the quietest spaces hold stories waiting to be told.
An exhibition that transforms abandonment into narrative, ruins into testimony, and silence into a form of presence, reminding us that nothing disappears entirely as long as someone remains capable of looking, recognising, and imagining.
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