Until world's borders

The exhibition created by Raffaella Rossi and Filippo Restelli of the Restelliartco Gallery is structured in four different and highly original visual paths for the Rome art Week 2020. An exhibition that goes through the Planet that opens its arms to virtually unite different peoples and traditions or suddenly shuts to illustrate and to scream the failure.

In the first exhibition the artists Irem Incedayi, Gabriele Donnini, Fabio Ferrone Viola, "Stasi" gathered in the collective "Working Heads", start from a skull as the essence and abode of the soul and of the human being, without superstructures and external influences to express their own personal concept of world and of limit.

It includes all the routes known or discovered by travelers, magical destinations with evocative atmospheres from "A Thousand and One Nights", the world in "Silence" by Irem Incedayi, a refined artist of Turkish origin who has always blended the culture and tradition of 'East, with its Mosques and Palaces illuminated by a light that at sunset seems to be gold dust and that of the West, with the elegant classicism of Rome or references to Greek mythology. And the artist's message already in the title is a call for peace so that in silence, the words of the weakest and the whispers of who no longer have a voice can be heard.

A world that becomes as small as the confines of a prison cell in Gabriele Donnini's “Ego te absolvo”. The skull fulcrum of the work is enclosed within the bars and has words, drawings or symbols that the inmates traced on the walls over the years engraved on its surface. Phrases that describes pain, but also pride, dignity, fear, hatred, courage. The prison as a microcosm, an "out of world", which is there and exists, a non-place where every human being is unique. And to describe this uniqueness, the surface of the skull is covered with gold veins; they are inspired by the Japanese practice of Kintsugi, the art of precious scars that teaches us to accept damage, not to hide wounds and fractures, but to make them precious.

A world in which the limits are human faults, which penalize him and push him to look for shortcuts, or routes already taken rather than trying to experiment or change by setting goals that are distant in time but more lasting. This is the concept that animates the skull of Fabio Ferrone Viola who in his work "Golden Age" traces birth and death to the cyclical nature of myth and to the eternal return. In this circular definition of time, what was in the past will necessarily repeat itself again and a new Golden Age will succeed this time lacking in beauty and spirituality that we are experiencing

In Justice - Tribute to George Floyd, "Stasi", provides his personal representation of a planet in which man is segregated within a wall, which is the materialization of safe space made up of compromises and mediocrity, of vices and of intellectualistic enclosures; a world in which the Skull dominates, an allegory of death but also of life, and on it a crown of thorns, a symbol of martyrdom and the ultimate sacrifice of man, as in the case of George Floyd.

In the second exhibition, the boundaries of the world for Umberto Stefanelli are those of a room in a love hotel in Minami in Osaka, within which the photographic project "Photogeisha" was born, twenty images to tell the ancient art of shibari, a real expressive form in which the viewer participates in the sharing of a living sculpture and a meditative practice which, through the flexibility of the body and mind, becomes an expression of power and exchange. A mixture of body and spirit in which the rope is a means and in which the path taken together counts more than the final destination.

In the third visual path the world opens onto boundless lands where animals are the protagonists of Marco Simoni's photographic project “Loners”. The title of each photos that make up the exhibition describes a characteristic or a detail that makes them unique and perfect, or still victims today: "The Ivory Game" states the image of the elephant placed in front of the rhino to denounce cruelty trafficking in nature, today in terms of size and turnover, the fourth largest form of crime in the world. “13,000 grams” the title chosen for the rhino, is not only the maximum weight of its horn but a number that for poachers represents ready money.

In the fourth visual path , the Gallerists Raffaella Rossi and Filippo Restelli present a selection of works by historical masters of Pop Art, photography and design: a real 360 ° exploration of the contemporary world. It begins with "Skull 157" by Andy Warhol, a 1976 silkscreen print in which the artist removes any negative connotation from the represented skull, an art deliberately deprived of its dramatic content to become "Il ludo", the game. And so also for Mao's face, free from any political judgment; the character is deliberately dethroned, disarmed by the use of strong and extreme color choices. It continues with a silk-screen print by Robert Indiana,and the tapestry “ Love” is beautifully combined, in the visual path, with Gufram's iconic "Mouth Sofa" inspired by the famous lips of Mae West. And then the skulls of Obey-Giant / Shepard Fairey, the supermodels Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss by street artist K-Guy, and for photography the Marilyn Monroe Crucifix III The last sitting, dated 1962 by Bert Stern, the stunning “Ophelia "By Matteo Basilè and the" Faster Faster - I am almost there "by irreverent David LaChapelle, which portrays a statuesque Pamela Anderson wearing only a pair of boots barreling on a motorcycle chased by photographers : to the edge of the limit and beyond.