The Eye of the inner leaf
6th March –1st August 2020
The gallery is now open
Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix is pleased to announce the second solo show of Alessandro Roma at the gallery, featuring new works on paper, of ceramics, and large scale wall painting.
About the exhibition
Impassive nature is perhaps simply a collection of rites that we have surmounted, the most ancient of the superstitions by which the universe tried to justify itself. It was so by instinct, founded on laws of its own and drawing out of them a reason for life.Then, with advent of the spirit, nature became arbitrary, the divine will, and rites shaped themselves accordingly. Now it has reverted to a law mechanism- that is why instinct is emerging again and the true ritual of rationalistic epochs is art (the ritual of the instinctive subconscious).
Cesare Pavese, 1 September 1944, 'This Business of Living: Diaries 1935-1950’ An allegory of the savage.
A leaf and an eye, the inner one, to return to the earth, to take root and rediscover nature: Alessandro Roma's exhibition 'The eye of the inner leaf' is an allegorical journey into the depth of the unconscious, a celebration of instinct which, through the pictorial gesture, turns into a pure vision of the savage that lives in us.
From wall paintings to works on paper, the gaze is lost in a selva of primordial forms where every element depicted is opposed to the others with an expressive force on its own, testifying that, in nature, everything has a raison d'être. Keepers of this order are the three sculptures from the series 'My head inside the nature' (2019), silvan divinities with phytomorphic appearance and apotropaic powers, which refer to a distant time when man and nature lived in total symbiosis.
So it is with the unconscious, where instincts and archaic desires coexist, originating a state of pre-knowledge of ourselves and reality.
Roma's latest exhibition leaves the path to return to the savage and to a mythical, irrational and timeless dimension as the magical explanation of the world.
V. Frisolone
Alessandro Roma (Milan, 1977)
Roma studied and graduated from Accademia di Brera, Milan. His work has been shown in museums and galleries across the world among which: Prague Biennale (2009), Mart Contemporary and Modern Art of Museum of Trento and Rovereto (solo) (2011), Villa Croce Museum (solo), Genoa, (2016), MIC International Museum of Ceramics (solo), Faenza, curated by I. Biolchini (2018).
Recent selected solo exhibitions include: Fondation Thalie, Brussels, curated by Nathalie Guiot (2019); Casa Museo Jorn, Albisola, curated by L. Bochicchio; z2o Sara Zanin, Rome (2018) Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London, curated by Marina Dacci (2017); Coburn project, London (2015); Sobering, Paris (2014), MAC Museum of Contemporary Art, Lissone (2014).
Recent selected group shows include: Archaeological Museum Salinas, Palermo, curated by H, Marsala (2019), Drawing Room, London (2015), Corvi Mora, Greengrassi, London (2014), Artists Space, New York (2014), Marianne Boesky, New York (2012) The Suburbans Gallery, Chicago (2012), Lorcan O'Neill, Rome,(2012).
VIDEOS
- Alessandro Roma ‘The eye of the inner leaf'
6’59”The 7 minute video introduces ‘The eye of the inner leaf’, the second solo exhibition of Alessandro Rom for the gallery. The first half is a very brief survey of individual works for the show including watercolours, ceramic sculptures and wall paintings, and the second part is an attempt to reproduce the feel when physically at the gallery surrounded by the mural works.
- image video ‘The eye of the inner leaf’
2’31”