ANTONELLO VIOLA

APERTO CONFINE SULLA GORGONE DI SARTORIO

OPENING 5TH MAY 2022

GALLERIA NAZIONALE D’ARTE MODERNA E CONTEMPORANEA

At La Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Antonello Viola (Rome, 1966) presents an exhibition project based on the knowledge of the collections and the historical, cultural and artistic heritage that the museum holds.

In line with the principles that animated the rearrangement and the new lay-out of the exhibition halls, Viola aims to deal with some important works, proposing a dynamic and vital dialogue between artists of the present and of the past, played out on the transcendent level of painting.

The artist’s interest focuses on Giulio Aristide Sartorio’s work and his masterpiece “La Gorgone e gli Eroi”, which was presented at the Venice Biennale in 1897. This large canvas is one of the crucial work of the many exhibition nuclei of Time is Out of Joint, together with a diptych of preliminary sketches. It is mainly these two pastels on paper, dedicated to the study of Medusa’s body, that inspired Viola to produce a series of new works. Reflecting on their collateral but at the same time very powerful meaning, the artist proposes with his language - abstract painting on paper - a ‘variation on the theme’, proposing a set up of 7 works respectfully displayed in the Sala delle Gorgoni.

This space is the only one involved in the project, which intentionally focuses on the study of one particular work, with its natural and exceptional modernity: the G.A. Sartorio’s preparatory sketches. With this operation of study, reflection and restitution in a contemporary context, Antonello Viola intends to underline the imaginative power of a work of the past, characterised - in Sartorio’s words - by a “fatal and enchanting beauty” to highlight “two aspects of the deep vanity of human existence”. 


Antonello Viola was born in 1966 in Rome, where he lives and works. In 2021 he took part in the group show Vitrea at the Triennale of Milan and in 2020 he participated at Real Utopias, a collateral event of Manifesta 13, in Marseilles. The most recent solo shows include Anche Bach mi ha salvato, presented by Francesca Antonini Arte Contemporanea (2020), Progetto Ufo at Lunetta11, Cuneo (2021) and La forma dell’oro, Building Box, Milan (2021). Viola took part in numerous institutional group shows, including Looking for utopia, curated by Bianca Cerrina Feroni and Melania Rossi, Novecento, Venice (2019), and The artist / Knight, curated by Joanna De Vos, Gaasbeek Castel in Flemish Brabant, Belgium (2017).