THE LAST WONDERFUL MINUTE, curated by Sébastien Delot, is the catalogue of the solo exhibition of the same name by Pietro Ruffo at Palazzo Esposizioni Roma. The exhibition, promoted by the Department of Culture of Rome Capital and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo – as well as produced and organised by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, is the largest ever dedicated to the artist by a public institution. As the curator Sébastien Delot writes, “anthropology has recently gained a place of honour in the artist’s thought. What fascinates him so much is undoubtedly the ability of this discipline to make intelligible the way in which organisms fit into the world, acquire a stable representation of it and contribute to modifying it by creating links, constant or occasional, with it and with other living beings”. Pietro Ruffo questions the impact of man on the Earth, exploring the legitimacy of the term Anthropocene and condensing the history of our planet and knowledge in the works exhibited. The catalogue is accompanied by texts by Marco Delogu, Ivana Della Portella, Sébastien Delot, Sofia Di Gravio, Rebecca Wragg Sykes and Guido Rebecchini.

For this exhibition, Pietro Ruffo presents sculptures/paintings in relief that resume his research on the hortus, the botanical garden. Starting from the 16th century, the botanical garden, with its scientific and medical aspect, became a place throughout Europe where people tried to acclimatize all known plants. It is this attempt at synthesis and inventory that fascinates the artist. Pietro Ruffo is closely interested in the historical stagnation of involuntary similarities between cultures, inevitably anchored to their environment, which is thus overcome by the mobility of superior cultures that have learned to move in historical time as if across the globe. More than a tangible formal correspondence, it is the notion of incomprehensibility that motivates this approach.