A FOCUS ON ITALIAN HERITAGE - Spazionuovo · CAMILLA BORGHESE Work by photographer Camilla Borghese (b. Rome, 1977) largely centers around the concept of “monumental”. Concentrating

A FOCUS ON ITALIAN HERITAGE


KATARA CULTURAL VILLAGE – DOHA, QATARJANUARY 15TH-30TH, 2019

CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHYRICCARDO AJOSSA, CAMILLA BORGHESE, OLIVIER ROLLER

Embassy of Italy in Doha

I am delighted to open the Embassy’s cultural program in Qatar for the year 2019 with the very special photographic exhibition “A Focus on Italian Heritage", curated by Italian contemporary art gallery Spazio Nuovo - Roma and showcased in the art-friendly and lively context of the Katara Cultural Village.

"A Focus on Italian Heritage" is a unique collection of art pictures, especially created and made for the purpose of this exhibition in Doha by a group of three artists. Each art piece is a visual and emotional journey through the renowned Italian heritage of classical architecture and arts which, over the centuries, has made and still makes Italy a great source of inspiration and beauty highly admired around the world.

The perspective though is unusual: the artists have focused the lens of their cameras on specific details or elements of architectures, sculpture and paintings, inviting visitors to engage in imagining the broader picture and the full context to which such details and elements belong. Their approach embodies what I believe to be the great contribution of contemporary photography to cultural diplomacy: it captures moments but also helps defining the past, building the present and shaping our vision for the future and, by doing so, is a powerful tool to share cultural heritage and cultures, as well as people’s feelings and ideas.

This is also the common vision shared by Italy and Qatar. Both our countries are committed to preserve, promote and make their respective cultural heritage as accessible as possible, so to encourage the inclusive development and dialogue between communities and generations, as it is also effectively highlighted in the "Qatar National Vision 2030".

What makes me particularly proud - along with the growing trade and investment figures between Italy and Qatar is that the increasing people-to-people contacts and the more intense cultural exchanges have further tied the bonds of friendship between our countries. The exhibition “A Focus on Italian Heritage” falls within this broader context of fruitful exchange and dialogue where I believe our ambitions, expectations and ideas can have no boundaries.

I hope that all our friends here in Qatar will enjoy the exhibition and I wish to all the visitors an engaging journey through our unique and beloved Italian heritage!

Pasquale Salzano, Ambassador of Italy to Qatar

H.E. Pasquale Salzano, Ambassador of Italy


The dictum nihil novi sub sole (“there is nothing new under the sun”) meaning whatever can be produced today has already been discovered has been adopted by several historic cultures over many centuries. Thanks to this conviction, we are made aware of how much Italian Renaissance-Humanism owes its identity in its entirety to the rediscovery of the immense cultural value of the Greco-Roman world.

With the Renaissance and especially due to the formalization and mastery of perspective, painting takes on a predominant role within the realm of artistic expression. Each leading form of technical innovation marks the period in which it first flourished, and today, we may now reasonably assign this influential leading role to photography.

The artists assembled together for the first time in this exhibition share the common bound of devotion to the photographic medium and to the sublime Greco-Roman world as a subject of personal interest. However, what links their compositions visually is an adeptness at highlighting and unveiling certain key elements of a specific work of art of ancient times, as if underlining an intrinsic meaning that eludes comprehension at a first glance.

Additionally, these three artists’ shared sense of composition, better known as focus in the world of photography, reflects their intrinsic abilities to simultaneously archive and innovate.

What distinguishes the work of Olivier Roller, Camilla Borghese and Riccardo Ajossa, are their artistic subjects, respectively sculpture, architecture and painting. Roller investigates the anatomic details of Classical Roman statues in order to reveal the most intimate and human aspects of projections of power, while Borghese concentrates on the wondrous perspective and the divine proportions of the monumental architecture of ancient Rome, and Ajossa re-examines fragments of Italian Renaissance paintings, mirroring them in the soft undulations of the sea to amplify and highlight their chromatic allure.

Central to their work is the mythic world, seemingly fleeting, of ages long gone such as the Ancient Greek and Roman periods as having so deeply marked, and continuing to mark, our Western civilization.

The enlargement technique adopted by these artists is doubly revealing. On the one hand, we are invited to observe the ability that marked the production of a world so seemingly primitive at first sight, but so very complex in its development. On the other hand, we become aware of how much we owe our way of life, our identity and our progress to our predecessors.

From the adept use of zoom as an analytical technique, to other forms of enlargement more conceptual in nature, each artist reveals how much Italy and the Western world in general remain rooted in the high degree of civilization achieved by our forebears, thus shaping “our” present.

Guillaume Maitre – Paulo Pérez Mouriz

OLIVIER ROLLEROlivier Roller (b. Strasbourg, 1971) lives and works in Paris. An invitation by the Louvre Museum to photograph some of their most important ancient Roman sculptures, resulted in a series of fascinating portraits rife with enigmatic allure. Roller continues to photograph iconic works that are housed in many of the great museum collections around the world including the Capitoline Museum, the National Roman Museum at Palazzo Altemps, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and the Musée Arles Antique, among others.

Roller’s series of photographs, Figures of Power, reexamines the glory of ancient Rome with a critical eye, revealing the underlying fragility and vanity of power. Capturing the alchemical beauty of antiquity through the unflinching lens of contemporary photography, he uses light as a paintbrush in order to illuminate the medium of stone and to unearth the character and personality of the figures represented.

SOLO SHOWS / GALLERIES - MUSEUMSMusée du Louvre, Paris, France

Institut Culturel Franco-Japonais, Tokyo, Japan

Musée des Moulages Université Lyon 2, France

Manufacture des Gobelins, Paris, France

Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France

National Roman Museum at Palazzo Altemps, Rome, Italy

PRIVATE & PUBLIC COLLECTIONSMaison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France

Musée Réattu, Arles, France

Collection d’Art Contemporain da la ville de Lyon, France

Collection Ruiz Picasso, Paris, France

ART FAIRSArte Fiera Bologna

Fotofever, Paris & Brussels

Photo Docks Lyon

MIA Photo Fair, Milan

ArtVerona

Art Stage Singapore

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Lucius Verus2008

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CAMILLA BORGHESEWork by photographer Camilla Borghese (b. Rome, 1977) largely centers around the concept of “monumental”. Concentrating on the rhythm, silence, and geometric cadence of Rome’s fabled buildings, her enigmatic composi-tions imbue static sights with overwhelming emotion. Using a large format camera with a long exposure to light, she reveals the magical, hidden language of architecture in striking detail.

SOLO SHOWS / GALLERIES - MUSEUMSGalleria Plenum, Catania, “Osmosi” curated by Massimo Siragusa

Kaunas Artists’ House, Lithuania, “Dialoghi Urbani”

Castel dell’Ovo, Napoli , “Orizzonte Verticale” curated by Marina Guida

Museo Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid, “Bulgari y Roma” curated by Lucia Boscaini

Spazio Nuovo, Roma, “Symmetria” curated by Guillaume Maitre and Paulo Pérez Mouriz

Galleria Artesanterasmo, Milano, “Intervalli Geometrici” curated by Serena De Dominicis

Città di Foligno, “Fuori Orario” curated by Gaia Toschi

ART FAIRSArte Fiera Bologna

Fotofever Paris & Brussels

MIA Photo Fair Milan & Singapore

Art Verona

PRIVATE & PUBLIC COLLECTIONS / COMMISSIONED WORKMinistero della Salute a Roma (Studio Transit) “Un ministero contemporaneo” curated by Giulio Salvioni

Borgo “La Martella” (Matera), in collaboration with the Catholic University of Lueven

L ’École française de Rome, Atelier Seraji Architects & Associates, Seste Engineering

Pelanda dei suini – MACRO Testaccio, Rome. “A cultural center in the slaughterhouse of Rome” curated by Marco Mulazzani

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RICCARDO AJOSSAIn Riccardo Ajossa’s (b. Rome, 1974) recent series of photographs, classical Italian masterpieces are reinvisioned as contemporary elegaic abstractions. Harnesing the luminous light that appears during tidal changes along the beaches of Puglia, Italy, Ajossa joins “earth and sky” marrying details from paintings by Renaissance masters including Antonello da Messina, Andrea del Sarto, Parmigianino and Caravaggio, with their reflections upon the water’s edge.

SOLO SHOWS / GALLERIES - MUSEUMSFondazione AICA, Milan, Italy Palazzo Albrizzi, Venice, Italy

Tonnspur Museum, Vienna, Austria

Quattro Canti, Collezione Bilotti, Palermo, Italy

Museo Boncompagni-Ludovisi, Rome, Italy

Espaço 321 Jacaranda, São Paulo, Brazil

Phoenix Ancient City Museum, Fanghuang-Hunan, China

#incerticonfini, Spazio Nuovo, Rome, Italy

ART FAIRSArtVerona

MIA Photo Fair, Milan

PRIVATE & PUBLIC COLLECTIONSVenice Biennale Archive

Museum Benaky, Athens

Korea Craft & Design, Seul

Foundation Wien, MQ Installation

Pontificio Consiglio della Cultura, Vatican City

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GALLERIA SPAZIO NUOVO - ROMEFounded in 2010 by Guillaume Maitre & Paulo Pérez Mouriz, Spazio Nuovo is dedicated to the development of Italian and international contemporary art in Rome with a special focus on photography. Poetical innovation and academic rigour enable the gallery to further its bonds with collectors and institutions, by providing them with the utmost creative insight and expertise with which to build their collections.

COLLABORATIONSThe Embassy of Italy, DohaThe French Academy in Rome – Villa MédicisThe National Roman Museum at Palazzo Altemps, RomeThe Embassy of France, RomeThe Embassy of Brazil, Rome

Spazio Nuovo wishes to thank the following:

the Italian Embassy in Doha without whose collaboration this exhibition would not have been possible,the Ambassador of Italy in Doha for his commitment for the arts and strong belief in the dialogue between cultures,the Katara Cultural Village for welcoming the emerging Italian art scene to Qatar.

For further information about the artworks please contact:[email protected] +39 3405199762 +39 3409854675

Credits & copyrights 2018 © Spazio Nuovo

© Olivier Roller © Camilla Borghese

© Riccardo Ajossa

Embassy of Italy in Doha

Documents

A FOCUS ON ITALIAN HERITAGE - Spazionuovo · CAMILLA BORGHESE Work by photographer Camilla Borghese (b. Rome, 1977) largely centers around the concept of “monumental”. Concentrating