The works displayed in the hütte refer to the idea of support, assistance, help, both physical and emotional, to which all mankind recurs. The supports on which man acts every day represent in the exhibition project the stage of the existence. Each sign within the composition is connected to a symbolic meaning and has to do with human history. 

The floor on which the visitor walks, consists of 210 planks in red fusion wax. The chair on which a pianist sits to perform has a newspaper wedged in the back that will be replaced daily, indicating a continuous change into something that is always apparently the same. Some papers lay down on a plinth ideally waiting to be filled out with ideas. 

Every single sculpture is the transfigured portrait of an object with its own history, except then to reveal as other than itself. The viewer is invited to interact with them, but at the same time the installation appears complete even in the absence of human presence. In this sense, while “Cintura”, a suspended work, can interact with two visitors, the artwork “Cartello” consumes its communicative functionality in the lighted candle that spreads over the surface. On the other side, in the work “Maniglia” human participation is just simulated. Its automatic movement leads to an elsewhere, even if no one can actually activate it to access the entrance. 

Through his multidisciplinary practice, Arena implements continuous and subtle references to contemporary society, highlighting the impossibility of being totally self-sufficient and how crucial is to have a support from others. Art, just like religion, magic, philosophy and politics, is a support for human life, but also an antidote that humanity has created to give meaning to the existence and to be protected against the unknown. 

The new format of #Project Room gives the opportunity to get even more into the heart of the artist’s creative process. Indeed, the exhibition will host a documentary section dedicated to all the suggestions and sources collected by the artist, his studio and the curators during the conceiving of the project. 

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, published by Lenz, with an unprecedented conversation between the curators and the artist including photographic documentation of the works on display. 

#ProjectRoom is a format created by Fondazione Nicola del Roscio in 2019 on the occasion of the opening of the space and developed concurrently with other exhibitions until now. #ProjectRoom was originally thought for a specific room within the space of the Foundation. It has now been disconnected from this original idea and evolved to give the artist the opportunity to choose the area of intervention, generating unexpected cross-references and interactions. #ProjectRoom is a venue of its own, separated from the exhibitions on schedule, an autonomous expression of the artist’s ideas, but in connection with the spirit and the goals of the Foundation: the promotion of art in all its forms of expression. As an additional goal, the new format aims at going beyond its spaces to get into direct contact with viewers and to develop projects in locations outside the Foundation. #ProjectRoom is a series of events of variable duration, spread out in time, that make no attempt to follow the traditional framework of a specific programming.

#ProjectRoom