Vincenzo Scolamiero. Con qualche parte della terra

Promoted by the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale, Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, and Fondazione Mattatoio di Roma - Città delle Arti, the free exhibition in Pavilion 9A of the Mattatoio traces fifteen years of pictorial research by Vincenzo Scolamiero, Professor of Painting at the Department of Visual Arts of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma. It features more than thirty of his works, including paintings on canvas and panel, works on paper, and artist’s books.

The exhibition explores the many areas that have long nourished the artist’s research, such as music, poetry, and the careful observation of everyday life. In this way, painting becomes a site of profound reflection, expressing an inner mobility and a philosophical attitude toward life. The title of the exhibition (“Con qualche parte della terra”, With Some Part of the Earth) is taken from a verse by the American poet Louise Glück, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. It refers to an all-encompassing relationship with the world, which emerges in the works on display through minimal traces, suggesting reflections on the transience and impermanence of human existence.

Vincenzo Scolamiero’s painting is characterized by the construction of a dynamic space, centered on the concept of emptiness as a structural element. The exhibition begins with a series of works in which compositional balance is built on just a few elements, with minimal spatial suspension, while the works in the subsequent rooms of the Pavilion show a gradual shift toward greater tonal and structural complexity, resulting from an increasingly close relationship the artist establishes with music and poetry.