Gabriele Silli’s solo show, titled Martello-Fiore op.15-18, is opening on Friday, December 7th, at 7 pm. It features the artist’s latest works, which are the result of his experimentation with materials, as a process of transformation and stigmatization. Paper, resins, debris, found objects, plastic, and organic materials are transfigured into stand-alone compositions or jutting out of the walls, like large crystallized excrescences. Their sculptural presence plays with the ambiguity of the material in terms of texture, weight, and size.

The exhibition, set up in a currently disused space in Rome’s Pigneto neighborhood, is split into two rooms that create two different moments within the itinerary: one is bright, on the ground floor, the other, more cavernous and underground, is dedicated to explorations. On the day of the opening, strongman Emanuele Greco will do a performance, called Martello-fiore 2018 or “of power” – a destructive-propitiatory action.

Gabriele Silli (Rome, 1982, lives and works in Rome)

He graduated in Philosophy at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 2009. Since 2004 he is part of the artistic collective MASTEQUOIA with Giacomo Sponzilli and Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli. His works, (as solo and with the collective), have been showcased at: Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; Museo del Novecento, Milan; PAC-Pavilion of Contemporary Art, Milan; Via Farini / DOCVA, Milan; OCAT, Shanghai; Villa Croce Museum, Genoa; Lia Rumma Gallery, Naples; Baruchello Foundation, Rome; Aaran Art Gallery, Tehran. Among his solo shows are  Esercizi di Accanimento Ottativo-Digitali, Federica Schiavo Gallery, Rome 2014; Mastequoia op. 09-13, Via Farini / DOCVA, Milan and Federica Schiavo Gallery, Rome 2014; Forms of the Rock in a night-hymn, Galleria Otto Zoo, Milan 2011. In 2012 (with MASTEQUOIA) he won the Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival prize in Florence and in 2008 he won a residency at the Italian Cultural Institute of Budapest .