In a month that amplifies every emotion, even the most intricate and complicated, a light and poetic exhibition gives us a hymn to fragility, the powerful – and regenerating – one of nature

December begins, a month that seems to see us (and want us) all very busy, energetic, positive, ready to give and unwrap gifts, to spend the holidays eating and toasting between events, lunches and dinners, with family, friends and colleagues. A happy month, for the happy ones.

December is actually a month that amplifies every feeling, every emotion risks exploding, or imploding. Skeins to unravel or tiredness to face, leave out the disturbing rhetoric, sometimes disrespectful, of the “sand you want you can”, who is fragile physically or psychologically, little changes you feel even more fragile.

So here is La fortuna della fragilità (The luck of fragility) delicate and ethereal, discreet and whispered, imbued with ''unsustainable' (powerful) lightness of nature, crowned by theatrical shadows that dance between evanescent silhouettes, but also from circled words and crumpled leaves as he invites us to observe and learn, helps to repair a 'network' of fragility, to put us back together and rebuild ourselves.

An exhibition that looks like a gift. For everyone.

The luck of fragility

Exhibited at the Mattia De Gallery Luca of Rome until December 10, 2022, The fortune of fragility born from the dialogue between Marcela Calderón Andrade and Tommaso Spazzini Villa, artists who question themselves on themes ranging from transience to the impossibility of finding a univocal reading of reality, from the charm inherent in change to surprising creativity of in nature.

The first initiative of Mattia De Luca projects, the exhibition is a off project, completely free, which was born from the desire to explore areas unrelated to strictly commercial dynamics.

Remind, repair and heal the web of fragility

Marcela Calderón Andrade’s works come from her observation of the complexities of relationships in nature, and they often consist of organic elements (seeds, leaves, the internal membrane of egg shells, and so on), which she uses to create sculptural works of untenable lightness.

Recover and regenerate as nature does

For this exhibition, the Colombian artist has chosen to show seven works which are part of her project Enchura project

  • Hongo looks at the shape of a tiny mould (Rhizopus stolonifer) that grows in the skin of some fruits as they decay, reproducing its fragile connections as an enlargement of a microcosm that takes shape on an architectural scale.

 

  • Círculo-Infinito, Churo-Espiral and Vibración-Onda, from the Vestigio series, are made with the internal membranes of egg shells – a life-protecting structure – which are able to recompose themselves after they have been broken, thanks to the memory that the material manages to preserve. A process of destruction and reconstruction

 

  • Red is a net woven with thin paper threads. Marcela here calls on us to remember, repair and look after the network of fragility on an emotional, physical, biological, and political level.

Shadow boxes, silhouettes and little theatres

Tommaso Spazzini Villa is showing some works from his Ombre series: originally created as shadow boxes – small dioramas that paid tribute to Lucio Fontana’s Little Theatres.

The ambiguity of nature and on the metaphysical potential of illusion

At the heart of the work is the shadow and its relationship with its source, through the creation of evanescent images and mysterious silhouettes created by dry leaves: a reflection on the ambiguity of nature and on the metaphysical potential of illusion – a sensitive continuation of the myth of the Platonic cave.

The power and freedom of words

Together with these works, the artist also presents a video related to his Self Portraits, a still unexhibited participatory art project carried out in Italian prisons in 2018, which involved four hundred inmates who were asked to choose words from individual pages of The Odyssey, in order to recompose a sentence within each excerpt.

Minimal gestures between hidden in everyday life to reveal the delicate complexities of humanity

A work with a wealth of cross-references and meanings of great contemporary relevance, between the non-measurable time of Homer’s poem and the contingent, intimate time of human suspension. At the heart of only apparently dissimilar works, there is a consistent, unitary research, which is that of detecting minimal gestures hidden in everyday life that help us find what can become instruments and reveal the delicate complexities of humanity.