Medardo Rosso. Rome

Exhibition.
Lighting.
Multimedia.

Palazzo Altemps. Roma / Ottobre 2019 / Electa

The Medardo Rosso exhibition layout leads the visitor along the pathway to discover both the work and the thinking of Medardo Rosso, as well as the historical richness of the spaces within the Palazzo Altemps in Rome.
The room on the main floor, which offers a special view onto Piazza Navona, hosts the first introductory moment leading to further investigation into the artist’s activities. This is developed along a central table, in the midst of the elements of the permanent collection.
From here, visitors are led into the first room, where a single work is displayed supported by a narration on the motives underpinning the exhibition and the artist’s biography.
Further on, the layout in the spacious main room defines the space with extreme lightness. The 21 sculptures are displayed on individual supports and define the rhythm for reading the different groups through the distances between the parts.
The light-weight, tubular metal wireframes that serve as the base thus replicate the dual plane of the original aisles and draw on philological criteria to respect the height and the positioning chosen for each sculpture by the artist himself.
Entering into an osmotic dialogue with the main room, a long photographic gallery on the west side runs along the exhibition hall, hosting the contact films of the photos of the sculpture on display, which were taken by Medardo himself. The artist’s gaze in relation to his own works is added to the critical gaze of the curators, allowing visitors to enter the creative process more deeply, completing the bare presentation of the work in the previous room of Medardo Rosso exhibition. As such, everyone can freely move between the two spaces, shifting between the works and the photographic reproductions and vice versa, in a continuous itinerary of discovery.
Finally, the 7 sculptures by Medardo Rosso dedicated to ancient theme are scattered along the tour route of Palazzo Altemps’ permanent collection in a kind of fertile fusion, offering visitors the possibility to build their own visit tour by seeking out further traces of Medardo.

“Light being of the very essence of our existence, a work of art that is not concerned with light has no right to exist.” Medardo Rosso.
©ph. Studiozabalik for Electa