Graziella Reggio and Michiel Blumenthal
“conchiglie e rinoceronti”
curated by Anna Cochetti
Opening*:
Sunday, October 24, 2021
from 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM
from 4:00 to 5:30 PM
Until Saturday, November 6, 2021*
from Tuesday to Friday:
from 5:00 to 7:30 PM
by appointment: 3288698229
*Fixed quota entry in accordance with anti-Covid rules,
with green pass and facemask
Storie Contemporanee
Studio Ricerca Documentazione
Via Alessandro Poerio, 16/B
00152 ROMA
www.facebook.com/ Storie Contemporanee – Arti visuali Scritture Società
Press Release
Sunday, October 24, 2021, at 11:30 AM – in the context of events of RAW Rome Art Week - STORIECONTEMPORANEE Project, curated by Anna Cochetti, at the Studio Ricerca e Documentazione in Via Poerio 16/B, hosts the new installation by Graziella Reggio and Michiel Blumenthal, “conchiglie e rinoceronti” , where once again the two artists dialogue, with their specific languages - drawings, photos and sculpture – on themes apparently different, but on which they converge their common thoughts. Just as it was in 2013, with Ananke e Metamorfosi, and, in the following years, withTrans/uman(z)e, 200 alberi, 100 alberi, Il bruco di Pietraporciana, Mapping Traces (Spoleto, Perugia, Sarteano and Rome).
Like in a Natural History Museum setting, canvas and concrete carved shells and playful, coloured paper rhinos are placed in a white room, both taken as iconic emblems. Symbols of our Earth, of his resilient and fragile fate, as resilient and fragile is the fate of the artist who interprets it, as of every woman, every man, every living being. Both leathery and vulnerable within their armour, they epitomize the summa of a never ending process by antithesis, where the closed, curved lines of the shells and the straight lines of the horns, stretched in the air, state the contrast between the Venus’ gratia of the former and the Mars’ vis of the latter, metaphoric recollection of the everlasting dichotomy of feminine vs. masculine, but, too, of their playful reversal between pondus vs. levitas intrinsic in the materials they are made of.
Principles which here, in a closed room, mirror each other and dialog, as in a Leopardi’s Dialoghetto morale…
Shells and rhinos which are, anyway – explicitly, for Michiel Blumenthal, or implicitly, for Graziella Reggio – some kind of alter ego of the artists, confiding some of their secret inclination, between toughness and fragility, thrills and blows, through the journey of life.
And finally, travel pictures of river and sea waters, in the video by Graziella Reggio e Michiel Blumenthal, match the tale of conchiglie e rinoceronti.
Wednesday, October 27, from 5:30 PM – in the context of Eventi Rome Art Week - for the first time in Rome, the animation video “Il Bruco di Pietaporciana” will be presented, a tale in images of a Crusader knight who laid down armour, spear and sword and decided to live in a cave as a hermit, a metaphor himself of being resilient and fragile...
Saturday, November 6, 2021, during the finissage, the Artist Book “conchiglie e rinoceronti” will be presented: in 3-coulors silkscreen printing, in limited edition, all copies are numbered and signed, and contain original drawing and photos.