Arriaca “Ambos somos estranjeros en esta tierra”

About

Montoro12 Contemporary Art is delighted to present Arriaca, the first two artist exhibition in Rome by Simone Pellegrini and Jorge Mayet, curated by Alberto Dambruoso. The exhibition will occupy both gallery rooms, colouring them with the artworks that distinguish Pellegrini’s unique style, along with Mayet’s floating tree sculptures. Arriaca, from Arabic “river of stones”, is the ancient name for the Spanish City of Guadalajara, which historically has been one of the first points of encounter between the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religion. The term is also used to indicate an ideal point where iconic and aniconic are conciliated together, as shown in the artists’ works.

Simone Pellegrini’s catalogue with Alberto Dambruoso’s critical text (Arriaca, Edizioni Baskerville) will be presented during the opening.

Simone Pellegrini’s artworks present simple, almost primitive forms outlined by the rhythms and motifs suggested by the traced lines, which by varying in intensity, from thin to thick, from light to darker, have the function to create, embrace and decorate. The figures that animate Pellegrini’s works, like Vario Diafano and Trame, present utterly organic characteristics, both human and plant-related that, when presented one next to the other, loose their original meaning in favour of new interpretations suggested by the reading of the work in its entirety, as opposed to as individual signs. The composition’s plot seems to be formed by a connective tissue which is arranged in a heterogeneous order that follows its parties’ structural organisation. Simone Pellegrini’s oeuvre is permeated by instincts that aim at redefining man and the world. In Pellegrini’s research we notice the recurring sign that goes beyond the Eurocentric symbology and confides itself in the freed semantic association, opening up extra pictorial and extra narrative interpretations.

In the same way, Mayet’s artworks, such as De Yemaya and Equilibristas de la Habana, present pure organic qualities given by the reproduction of natural elements like trees, roots and clumps of earth. In Mayet’s allegoric language, nature and artifice are combined together creating an enigmatic atmosphere, which is mostly given by the natural elements’ birth and growth within an utterly artificial context, such as that of a gallery space. Driven by the socio-political ruptures that break apart the relation between populations and their natural habitat, Mayet creates real-life tree forms with roots that seem to never touch the ground, as if in perpetual change. The artist uses trees as a symbolic icon able to resist such disastrous conditions, by creating objects that exist in their own image. Indeed, it is the Cuban artist’s photographic memory that delineates the artworks’ forms and colours. His real-life trees, which roots left floating in the air, as opposed to be deeply rooted, seem to function as a reference to the exiles’ weight, the distance from his own cultural roots.