In the spectacle of the World, between Eros and Thanatos

You can visit one new solo show by artist / photographer Valter Sambucini at the Borgo Pio Galleryin the heart of Rome, in via degli Ombrellari 1/2/3 – from 11 to 15 November 2022. Inauguration on 11 November from 5.00 pm.

For a brief mention of the origins of Borgo Pio Art Gallery it must be said that it was born from the common passion for art of four friends, Paolo Pardi and Manuela Citti, two artists with thirty years of experience, Giovanna Canu graduated in Art History and Tiziana Eufemia expert in antiques and communication –

Their vocation is to promote any type of art expression that has concreteness and the desire to aggregate different energies, thus proposing to host exhibitions of painting, sculpture, photography and furnishing accessories, not neglecting the promotion of events literary

Valter Sambucini, Roman, uses digital photography as a pictorial form. From a very young age he was editor-in-chief of the Effeuno magazine and consultant for the automation of post-production, quality control and printing processes with the major Italian cinemas, such as: Cinecittà, Vittori, Telecolor.

Graduated in electronic engineering in 1980, he has had numerous work experiences in the field of applied research. In the 90s he was a researcher at ENEA, then at the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) and he worked from the first laser applications to the use of remote sensing methodologies. He is the author or co-author of over one hundred publications, including articles in technical-scientific journals, contributions in national and international conferences, while his photos have been published in various magazines and newspapers. His photographic research in an anthropological sense has been exhibited on various occasions, for example in Lucca at Comics & Games and in Borgo a Mozzano in Garfagnana for the ten-year Halloween Celebration. He participated with photographic research in Anna Bigoni’s poetry book Acqua dolce, acqua salata. Where the Po meets the sea (Robin 2020) and the book Real cities, imaginary cities by Carla Guidi (Robin 2019). The latter research is reported with an article in the third volume of Giorgio Di Genova’s essay Interventions and erratic explorations on art. The dialectic of a critic’s profession (Gangemi publisher 2021).

Today, in a complex and increasingly disharmonious society, a desire for Beauty is emerging overwhelmingly, as a refuge from the ugliness of everyday life, but above all as a desire for information and a point of reference.

What have they taught us these last few years, basically about fear, suffering, a sense of unease, insecurity? Perhaps we still don’t know, but the usual references have disappeared, whatever they were. Instead, the Phantom of War reappears in an anthropised world like ours, where viral pandemic infections (zoonoses) have increased exponentially, aggravating the other tragic problems linked to pollution, the impoverishment of biodiversity replaced by intensive farming and monocultures, impoverishment of the soil and the infamous intensive exploitation of resources that are now almost exhausted. There was no knowledge of the impressive “Weight of Things”.

For all nostalgics, we recommend reading the article by Telmo Pievani (University of Padua) in the Corriere delle sera of 28 February 2021, from which one can learn (with quotes from the authoritative magazine “Nature”) that Biomass, that is the total mass of living beings on earth, now weighs exactly like the “anthropogenic mass” … That is, precisely in 2020, the sum of the objects built by man equaled the weight of all the rest of life put together, while just at the beginning of ‘ 900 human things were only worth 3%.

If Beauty is only in the eye of the beholder, we will not be saved. Instead it is the ancient Goddess who continues to look at us, from the spectacle of the World, while we look at her in every reflection of water, light or dark, illuminated by the sun or by the light of the Moon, which reflects our helplessness, our shadow, but also our poetry… The visual research of Valter Sambucini, in a historical journey in the Aniene Valley, awakens an intense forgotten spirituality, right from the mention of Sibilla Tiburtina herself. With the digitization of photographic images he reaches poetry, passing through the aquatic reflections of the historic river and the fountains of the Villas.