After Figures and Forms (2023), Materials and Motions is the second exhibition of a series which the gallery curates to introduce new artists to the Roman scene. The format is agile, a medium is chosen and from that, works already created by artists, who are not represented by other galleries in Rome, are presented.
Materials and Motions focuses on sculpture and is an opportunity to investigate different ways of activating sculptural forms in space. The show will feature sculptural works made in a variety of materials (translucent silicon, wax, ceramic, plaster, iron and cement) that express a movement, or are born to be activated through performance or are in transformation.
The artists selected to articulate this investigation are Letizia Calori (1986, lives in Bologna), Ornella Cardillo (1993, lives in Venice) and Axel Gouala (1987, lives in Rome).
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Letizia Calori (b. 1986, Bologna) studied at the Faculty of Visual Arts at IUAV University in Venice and at the HfBK Städelschule in Frankfurt.
She is an artist working on sculptures, installations and performance. Her practice investigates the relationship between architecture and bodies, forms of power and vulnerability, social structures and fallibility. Employing a variety of media, the artist transforms commonplace objects and materials into evocative sculptures and installations that give new, redemptive forms to subjective experience.
Calori has exhibited internationally in institutional spaces such as XII Sculpture Quadriennale in Riga, BIENNALSUR, Buenos Aires and Tucuman, Argentina, Istituto Italiano di Cultura São Paulo, MAMbo - Museo d'arte Moderna di Bologna, Pinacoteca in Bologna, Antonio Ratti Foundation, Como, ISCP and Institute of Italian Culture, New York, Pecci Museum, Prato, MMK- Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Deutsche Filmmuseum and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt, Botin Foundation, Santander and Moderna Museet Stockholm.
Among the various prizes and awards: in 2023 she is a winner of the XII edition of the Italian Council Prize, in 2021 she is the recipient of the “Un'Opera per il Castello” Prize at Castel Sant'Elmo, Naples. In 2020-2021 she is in residence at the Nuovo Forno del Pane, MAMbo Museum, Bologna. In 2020 she is the winner of the “Cantica 21, Italian contemporary art everywhere” award, sponsored by MIBACT and MAECI, in 2017 she wins the call for Contemporary Panoramas, sponsored by MiBACT and GAI in 2016 she wins the 13th New York Prize and is artist-in-residence at ISCP, in 2015 she receives the Heinz und Gisela Friederichs Foundation artist grant, in 2013 she receives the Ernst & Young Prize. Since 2009 she is part of the duo Calori & Maillard.
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Ornella Cardillo (b. 1993, Modena) lives and works in Venice.
Graduated in Visual Arts and Fashion at IUAV in Venice, in 2023 she was co-director finalist of the Biennale College Teatro. In 2022 her work was exhibited at Documenta Stadt in Kassel, while in the same year she won the Bevilacqua La Masa artist residency in Venice.
As multidisciplinary artist, she expresses her practice in the encounter between art and theater. Her works are conceived as "moving sculptures" that, coming to life in space, become protagonists of performances and installations.
Her artistic research focuses on the relationship between form and time, concentrating on the forms of the place understood as signs, traces and voices of time: like writing, they narrate events. The forms are broken down and recomposed, until they construct sculptural silhouettes that are understood as the Habitus worn by the character in question, conceived as a projection of being and staging of a particular existential condition. “Form” (from the Latin “portamento” and “containment”), to show and have within oneself, and “Logos” (from the Greek “lego”, to connect and put together) guide the creation of the characters, representing an archetype.
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Axel Gouala (b. 1987 Paris) is a French artist based in Rome. He graduated with a MFA from the Haute École des Arts du Rhin in Strasbourg in 2014 and lives between France and Italy.
His work has been recognized with several Prizes in France, Switzerland and Italy, including recently the Kunst Preis Riehen (City of Riehen Art Prize, Switzerland 2022) and the prize Premio Fondazione Cultura e Arte, Sezione Internazionale (Italy, 2023), Special Prize of the InsideArt Talent Prize 2023.
He has received support from recognized cultural institutions such as the French Ministry of Culture, the Goethe Institut, the Institut Français and has exhibited in several Biennales and Art centers in Europe including Selest’art 2019, the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris, the CEAAC (France), the Kunsthalle Basel, the Kunsthalle Palazzo (Switzerland), the Casino Luxembourg, the Kunstverein Freiburg, the Künstlerhaus Bethanien Galerie (Germany), the Meetfactory (Czech Republic), and the Mattatoio Roma (Italy).
