Renzogallo. Oltre le ceneri

Curated by Ada Lombardi and organised by Assessorato alla Cultura di Roma Capitale, Azienda Speciale Palaexpo and Fondazione Mattatoio di Roma - Città delle Arti, the free exhibition at the Mattatoio Roma unfolds as a conceptual and poetic journey through Renzogallo’s research. Its starting point is the site-specific work created for the occasion: a sequence of red iron elements that, arranged within the space as a single organism, give form to a large unified installation.

The exhibition continues with an installation made of wood and red-painted newspapers, paintings on canvas and mixed-media works on paper, all of which participate in the concept of threshold and passage, within a widespread dialogue between materials and dimensions. Installations and large-scale works in diverse materials (such as paper, clay, wood, wire mesh, glass or steel cables) have a prominent place in Renzo Gallo’s artistic output since 1985, the year in which the artist changed his name to Renzogallo. His works have gradually adopted a more three-dimensional approach arriving at installations with distinctly environmental characteristics that pursue a personal idea of monumentality.

At the heart of the artist’s work lies a sense of urgency: to move beyond pre-packaged forms of storytelling, to challenge dominant narratives (particularly those of the mass media) and to seek out unexpected horizons of meaning. Each structure is conceived to trigger, through the presence of the viewer, an active relationship between body, space and vision. Oltre le ceneri (Beyond the Ashes) is an invitation to question space as it moves through time: a transformation of places into surfaces of passage, into crossings of meanings, forms and relationships. Through the evocative and symbolic power of red, the exhibition project becomes a dream of power, a sign and a sense of vital warmth that takes on volume and intensity, a lively and restless purity.