Entering the exhibition of Giovanni Rossi, the steps are muffled by the straw that completely covers the floor, a strong smell penetrates the nostrils and projects us into a distant space but, at the same time, humble and real. The title of the exhibition, “Il cielo in una stalla”, an amusing reworking of the famous song by Gino Paoliperfectly describes the layout of the space, which is curated by Alessio Vigni. The exhibition focuses on the iconographic figure of the lamb: the artist chooses this animal, evoking the name of the gallery that hosts it, LAMB, a term which in English means lamb but which, in reality, was born from the fusion of the word Laboratory (LAB) and the name of Marina Bastianello (MB), director of the homonymous gallery. “The animal of God” finds its consecration in every work and in its favorite environment, that is, the stable. The exhibition, in fact, investigates the themes of spirituality bringing us back to the ideal place, a symbol of Christian adoration, today brought back to the contemporary.
Among the works on display it is certainly worth mentioning the one that opens the path, Intimate soap, a natural soap sculpture based on incense and olive oil with which you can wash your hands, following a precise ritual. The soap allows us to clean and erase not only the external dirt but also the internal one, purifying us and “taking away the sins of the world”, the lamb sacrifices itself, just as a bar of soap is consumed in our hands.
The figure of the lamb also returns in the work Agnus Dei, the installation consisting of an overturned easel and a cyanotype, the ancient method of printing where it is the light that brings out the figure of the lamb, as if the canvas were a “contemporary Shroud”. If the exhibition is intended to be an attempt to reflect on spirituality, the choice of Paoli’s song as the title of the exhibition is curious.
Perhaps, it is precisely here that the dialogue between artist and curator can be observed, an attempt to translate spirituality into human terms which, inevitably, turns into a reflection on that human and earthly love, sung by Gino Paoli himself, and that sacred and ideal, two sides of the same coin.
Very interesting is the choice of the LAMB gallery to create a magazine for each exhibition, an informative tool with an original appearance, curated by the collective ACIDO LATTICO. In the issue dedicated to Giovanni Rossi’s exhibition, the artist and the curator have decided to include an unpublished column, entitled “The Sermons”. Six professionals from the world of contemporary art, among which the names of Nicolas Ballario, Edoardo Monti and Viviana Bertanzetti, have been asked to write real criticisms of the exhibition and the artist. An original idea to focus on the absence of criticism of the contemporary artistic world.
The sky in a stable, between the sacred and the profane: Giovanni Rossi in Mestre