Giuliana Rosso — Exhibitions

⋆ solo exhibition ⋆

Exhibition press release by Caterina Avataneo:

If Giuliana Rosso were to launch a fashion line, it would be perfect for the worst imaginable skeletons in the closet—or at least the quirkiest—as her parade of garments, hung like laundry at La Tôlerie, well shows.

Dracula’s rubber teeth sprout on a Gatorade cap, creepy masks pop out of pullovers, and a cringe green Huggy Wuggy comes alive on an equally colored, piss-stained pair of jeans. These are just a few examples of a new series of painted second-hand clothes tailored with the inclusion of a variety vintage toys, avidly accumulated over early morning flea markets scavenges as well as late night Vinted hunts. It’s the first time that the artist paints on clothes, yet it comes as no surprise that it’s not on canvas where paint is to be found, typically accompanied by a series of numerous drawings on dusting paper, also pivotal within her practice.

Painting, in Rosso’s clutches, is often pushed beyond its physical boundaries. It manifests in expanded forms; as site-specific interventions, or covering objects of various nature and papier-mâché sculptures. And even when more “classically” placed on canvas, thick layers of pigment spill over the edges, leaving jagged contours as if the paint were being propelled outward into space—defying gravity until there’s nothing left to hold it in place. On this specific occasion, figuration—pivotal in Rosso’s artistic expression at large—is treated in such a literal fashion that it tips into abstraction, as vivid monochrome brushstrokes leave the task of representation to actual objects, allowing for existential tones to emerge together with narrative ones.

Analogously, the real is depicted in all its precarity, reaching irreal terrains where each one’s internal demons become disturbingly possible. It makes perfect sense, then, that a miniature Buffy’s flipper floats in a laundry basket, just as a series of cut-into-shape drawings of underwear give a personality to chastity, menstrual discomfort, wounded feelings or disinhibited sexuality: not fantasy nor surrealism, but reality made unstable, porous, and susceptible to emotional and psychological overflow.

In Rosso’s universe, the everyday is cracked open just enough to let inner perceptions come into shape.

Adolescence, in all its sensitiveness, is where the artist temporally and visually places her oeuvre, letting such a collectively shared phase of life become a potent metaphor for a human condition in which chaotic psychological clumps—of shame, aggression, desire, anxiety, or solitude—are told in all their frictional essence. It will be easy to notice visual references to 90s toys and 2000s early internet culture, as well as the depiction of young figures in states of vulnerability or introspection, who navigate a world where the deepest fears materialise and where what’s normally labelled as imaginary or supernatural manifest in moments of

impotence. For instance, in Mouse Trap (2025)—the largest-scale chalk and charcoal drawing on dusting paper included in the show— a girl climbs up a tree’s mirroring bark. She has her trousers bent down and a preoccupied expression, visible from the reflection on the strange surface she barely holds to. Both the tree and the girl emanate a precious brightness that stands out precarious in a rather doomed environment, where two cruel figures wait devilishly. One will likely spot many other half-naked figures in the show, as well as references to genitalia. While there is a sense universality from Rosso’s tackling of sexuality and its taboos, ranging both irony and anguish, her androgynous figures also specifically expose the complexities of gender identity in ever more violent heteronormative enviroments, from current far right political orientations to family’s nucleous mindset, unveiling the fear and horror of not being able to come of age as queer or trans subjects. The same choice of proposing a hanging system inspired by laundry lines hints at a private dimension, traditionally domestic. In Italian, there is a common proverb, i panni sporchi si lavano a casa propria, indicating that the dirtiest and shameful aspects of life should not come out of one’s household.

Here we are, back to the skeletons in the closet! Overall, the painted and drawn garments that fill the space become more than clothing: they are surrogate skins and bodies’ extensions, bearing traces of personal and collective testaments very much alive in all their hunting spectrality.

The motif of the double recurs frequently too, addressing the most untangled relations of self and other within settings, such as forests or bodies of water, which are perfect tropes for inner and intimate states.

Possa qualcuno che non ho visto, che non vedrò mai (2023) is one of my favourite works ever made by Rosso. It shows a beautiful figure embracing another one, submerged in a spiral-shaped pond. The hug feels tender, melancholic. It’s intimate. There is a sense of quietness, perhaps an invite to trust and let go to the fluid, watery essence of emotion. The hairstyle and clothing of the two figures are identical, suggesting the two might as well just be one, while a six-fingered hand is a subtle acknowledgement of the imaginary nature of the scene. Its spontaneity offers a softness that is important to mention as lightness is, in fact, a key

component despite the intense emotional terrain that Rosso covers. Her works range loosely across various artistic disciplines (collage, drawing, painting, sculpture), letting free expression candidly manifest in all its splendour. Here, clumsiness is beauty: wild and fragile like a blade of grass. There are guardians and protectors in the show, from the squirrel perched on the tree’s mirrored branches in Mouse Trap (2025), to the chicken-legged wine glass over a boy’s shoulders approaching the unknown in The World is a Vampire (2024). Even a mischievous mosquito on a starry blanket in Terapia (2025) acquires cute notes, bringing pep to the feeling of suspension that characterises the entire show. Among the few works that touch the floor,

Muta di Basilisco (2025) is a giant Basilico's discoloured shed skin flopping inert. As the king of all evil looks like a fading memory, it serves as a reminder that what Rosso brings forward is a site of recognition, rather than a battleground, dedicated to all that is repressed, unspoken, disallowed—yet alive, thus worthy of a name. We decided to personify all this as a group, under the name of The Hoverers. They are those who inhabit the most intimate dimensions, and that will make one feel naked, perhaps finally light. What words cannot express will be lived in the show.

⋆ solo exhibition ⋆

Exhibition press release by Treti Galaxie:

Proposing techniques and materials dear to Rosso's research, such as charcoal on spolvero paper, papier-mâché and oil on canvas, Bored Bones is composed of new environmental installations, sculptures and paintings poised between reality and imagination, consistency and allusion, gravity and lightness.

The exhibition is structured as a montage of several possible solo shows by the artist, connected by recurring elements and submerged plots, episodes of a web series suggested and condensed within the gallery rooms.

Populated by subjects portrayed in situations of quiet uncertainty and transience, Bored Bones is configured as a place open to individual discovery, an invitation to recover, activate and nurture the sense of adventure and wonder that endearingly cradled the runs on our bright May afternoons.

At the entrance we find a work leaning against the wall. It seems to be in the process of being set up, or taken down before being packed away again. Maybe the exhibition installers took a break, maybe they went for a drink somewhere, or to eat ice cream, or lunch. Who knows.

We notice that the screws are plastic, oversized, unreal, as if materialized from a cartoon. On the floor, next to the painting, a pair of toy pliers and a toy screwdriver.

The installation/uninstallation of this work is a statement of the artist's poetics, of the state of her subjects, always portrayed in situations of transience. Like the work at the entrance, they are both ready and not ready. Or, they are ready but do not seem so. Or again, they are not ready, but are presented as such. Ready, ready, one must always be ready. But ready for what?

Light, floating figures greet us beyond the thick door of a safe room. Pay attention to them: they are as large as we are, perhaps slightly larger. Their fragile frame is reflected in ours, and our frailties lend stability and weight to the context. Stretched out vertically, they watch us. As we leave the room, they drop their colors.

Transitions of state with water that does not wet and fire that does not heat. Ardently soaking wet. These works portray what they fear the most.

Here we enter through a wall of closed shutters. Maybe we don't have permission, maybe we should. Who can tell. Lightning gutters and ink novels. "Feather forecast. Carpal diem. Water those far fair fires?”

Maybe we are in a burrow, and being in here reminds us that long ago we were looking at a flooded room inside a stove, a boulder on the sheets, comet eyebrows and hairline cracks. A burrow, a tunnel, a tunnel in a tunnel under the leaps of frogs. The arachno-design of Puddle Mansion.

Smear that mirror on the wall, may you steer her with your drawl.

In this room, sleeping characters, or characters who are about to sleep, and their dream world is presented as real. But to whom is that world real? For us? For them? Perhaps we are manifestations of their fantasies.

Let's be quiet, let’s move slowly or we might wake up.

⸺⸻

Proponendo tecniche e materiali cari alla ricerca di Rosso, quali carboncino su carta da spolvero, cartapesta e olio su tela, la mostra si compone di nuove installazioni ambientali, sculture e opere pittoriche in bilico tra realtà e immaginazione, consistenza e allusione, gravità e leggerezza.

La mostra è strutturata come un montaggio di diverse possibili mostre personali dell’artista, tra loro connesse da elementi ricorrenti e trame sommerse, come episodi di una serie in streaming suggeriti e condensati nelle stanze della galleria.

Popolata da soggetti ritratti in situazioni di quieta incertezza e transitorietà, Bored Bones si configura come un luogo aperto alla scoperta individuale, un invito a recuperare, attivare e alimentare il senso di avventura e meraviglia che cullava di carezze le corse nei nostri luminosi pomeriggi di maggio.

All’ingresso troviamo un’opera appoggiata alla parete. Sembra in procinto di essere allestita, o disallestita prima di essere di nuovo imballata. Forse gli allestitori si sono presi una pausa, forse sono andati a bere da qualche parte, a mangiarsi un gelato, o a pranzo. Chissà.

Notiamo che le viti sono di plastica, sovradimensionate, irreali, come materializzate da un cartone animato. A terra, vicino al dipinto, una pinza e un cacciavite giocattolo.

L’installazione/disinstallazione di questa opera è una dichiarazione della poetica dell’artista, dello stato dei suoi soggetti, sempre ritratti in situazioni di transitorietà. Come l’opera all’ingresso, sono al contempo pronti e non pronti. Oppure, sono pronti ma non lo sembrano. O ancora, non sono pronti, ma vengono presentati come tali. Pronti, pronti, bisogna essere sempre pronti. Ma pronti per cosa?

Figure leggere e fluttuanti ci accolgono oltre la spessa porta di una camera blindata. Fateci caso: sono grandi come noi, forse poco più grandi. La loro fragile struttura si riflette sulla nostra, e le nostre fragilità danno stabilità e peso al contesto. Stese e distese in verticale ci guardano. Mentre noi lasciamo la stanza ci lasciano i loro colori.

Passaggi di stato con acqua che non bagna e fuoco che non scalda. Ardentemente fradicie. Queste opere ritraggono ciò che maggiormente temono.

Qui si entra da una parete di serrande chiuse. Forse non abbiamo il permesso, forse dovremmo. Chi può dirlo. Grondaie di fulmine e romanzi d’inchiostro. “Leggerò come una piuma. Ti strapperò un bacino. L’ava lava l’avo con la lava”

Forse siamo in una tana, e stare qui dentro ci ricorda che tempo fa guardavamo una stanza allagata dentro a una stufa, un macigno sulle lenzuola, sopracciglia di comete e crepe di capelli. Una tana, un tunnel, una galleria in galleria sotto ai balzi delle rane. L’aracno-design di Villa Pozzanghera.

Secchio secchio delle mie brame, specchio riflesso nelle tue trame.

In questa stanza, personaggi che dormono, o che sono in procinto di dormire, e il loro mondo onirico si presenta come reale. Ma per chi è reale quel mondo? Per noi? Per loro? Forse siamo manifestazioni delle loro fantasie.

Facciamo silenzio, muoviamoci piano o rischiamo di svegliarci.

⋆ solo exhibition ⋆

Exhibition press release by Caterina Avataneo:

1. A journal

I remember those sweaty summer nights in Alassio, when darkness was taking over, deceptive, sweltering still. Hot as hell, perfect for mosquitoes but not for sudamina. I could not breathe, nor move too much and certainly I couldn't sleep. So I found my way to seek relief, skating under the guard of stars to chase the last marine breeze, with my grandpa teaching me how to turn with my rollerblades, making my body aerodynamic, slender, lightning like a ninja sword… wow he was good! He was a football player for Messina, and a professional skater.. Me on the other hand, clumsy, but fearless enough to experiment with some tricks. I was good too, actually. And then just a tiny grain of sand and there I was. On the burning asphalt with bruises and grazes, my skeleton knee pads screaming of horror and me trying to contain tears, hoping the other cool kids did not see. It’s always a downfall, a descent at least. Mothers push their babies down their abyssal wombs and out their cavernous vulvae, in a painful and sticky journey. For other creatures it is more elegant, Lucifer vaulted downwards so many times before creating his potent inferno cone, and Alice got swallowed in the rabbit-hole… Down down down. I have heard that even the human mind is a hellish bottomless cesspit of neurons if you venture there. At MASSIMO too, everyone descends all the time, a maximum decline. Just a few steps down the swampy rathole and Giuliana’s underworld is unveiled. At its entrance an angsty lemur-boy stares who makes a landfall. He, Caronte of basements, is a supernatural apparition not to be trusted. His icy eyes invite to secrecy… because Giuliana is a mad scientist, a real artist. She is able to open dangerously fascinating black holes, she catches comets and leashes them; you will see with your own eyes. It’s a fertile lab disclosing the universe. In this place of terror and wonder even my rollerblades were invented, by two American brothers and a tired rabbit. Just a turn and there I am, fallen. In the midst of my time-travel-tunnel, my palpitating tornado, my fullest life. It’s electric! Everything moves but I am still, frozen somehow, like in the worst ordeals. Giuliana makes things cheerful, light and luminescent for me. She even fixes cracks with plasters, carefully, with love. And while she drags me away I become her prisoner. My frankensteinian skin gets greener: the basement is a sealed tower and I am the dragon in it. Powerful, in total surrender. Now I don’t really know what will happen. I feel nostalgic of those summer nights, when I knew how to fall, I had no idea how wise I was then. We unplumbed souls, must be light if we want to descend. The deeper we go, the darker it gets.

The girl with rollerblades

2. On falling and other considerations

I have a Giuliana Rosso drawing at my house, it depicts a girl lying face on the floor on a cobbled road. She watches me silently while I write, not disclosing too much, her emoji face-tattoos still smiling. Looking at her orange nails at the edges of the paper I notice the position of her hands, seemingly embracing this coarse surface… The characters that populate canvases, sculptures and drawings in Giuliana Rosso’s work often fall, magnetically attracted to the ground. Heads down, feet up, face on the floor, with open wounds and adsorbed gazes they capitulate and succumb in forests, lakes, bedrooms, bat-hubs and other hallucinatory environments whose ordinary nature takes dark, supernatural tones. They lay there, serenely, absently, they flop on the ground and let external forces in. Their fall belongs to vulnerability, clumsiness and error, but also to bliss and contemplation. What makes it creepy is not the action itself but the reaction to it: nuanced and bewildering. Once the fall happens everything around the characters becomes magic. Electricity, auras, spirits of the forest and other invisible things become apparent, and the madness of reality permeates through nightmarish highly synthetic and psychedelic colours. Irreal rather than surreal, the work of Giuliana Rosso offers particular versions of reality which are emotional, intuitive and easily impressionable. The stories that her characters carry do not provide actual descriptions, nor clear resolutions. They are fragments of a traumatised present, mirroring the fears of our world in metamorphosis and reminding us how renewal really functions. Rosso’s work is like the teens it depicts: wild and fragile like a blade of grass.

Caterina Avataneo

⸺⸻

1. Un diario

Ricordo quelle afose notti d’estate ad Alassio, quando l’oscurità prendeva il sopravvento, ingannevole, l’aria ancora soffocante. Faceva un caldo infernale, perfetto per le zanzare ma non per la mia sudamina. Non riuscivo a respirare, ne a muovermi troppo e tantomeno a dormire; così trovavo sollievo andando a pattinare. Inseguivo l’ultima brezza marina sotto la guardia delle stelle, e di mio nonno, che mi insegnava a curvare con i rollerblades redendo il corpo aerodinamico, snello e scattante come una spada ninja… wow com’era bravo lui! Era un calciatore del Messina, e un pattinatore professionista. Io, invece, goffa, ma impavida abbastanza per tentare qualche mossa. Ero bravina anche io… Ma poi un singolo granellino di sabbia ed eccomi giù sull’asfalto rovente, coperta di graffi e sbucciature. I teschi delle mie ginocchiere gridando d’orrore, e io trattenendo le lacrime a stenti, sperando che gli altri ragazzi non avessero notato l’accaduto. È sempre un crollo, un decadimento, un declino perlomeno. Le madri spingono i loro neonati giù per grembi abissali, fuori da vulve cavernose, in un viaggio doloroso e appiccicoso. Per altre creature la discesa è più elegante. Come Lucifero, che ha volteggiato in basso così tanto fino a cerare gli inferi, oppure Alice, inghiottita nella tana del coniglio... Giù, giù, sempre più giù. Ho sentito dire che anche la mente umana è un pozzo infernale senza fondo per chi ci si avventura. Anche a MASSIMO tutti devono scendere, un maximum decline. Pochi passi giù per l’umido cunicolo a scale, e il mondo ctonio di Giuliana si rivela. Al suo ingresso, un inquietante e angosciato ragazzo-lemure fissa chi approda. Lui, Caronte dei seminterrati, è un'apparizione soprannaturale di cui diffidare. I suoi occhi di ghiaccio invitano alla segretezza… perché Giuliana è una scienziata pazza, una vera artista. Vedrete coi vostri occhi: lei sa aprire buchi neri pericolosamente affascinanti, cattura comete e le mette al guinzaglio. Il suo è un laboratorio fertile che dispiega l'universo. In questo luogo di terrore e meraviglia persino i miei rollerblades furono inventati, da due fratelli americani insieme ad un coniglio stanco della solita routine. Svoltata la prima curva ed eccomi lì, caduta. Lì, al centro del mio wormhole, mio palpitante tornado di un viaggio nel tempo, pieno di vita. E’ elettrizzante! Tutto attorno a me si muove, ma io sono immobile, congelata, come nel peggiore dei calvari. Giuliana si impegna a rendere tutto spensierato, colorato e luminescente per me. Con dei cerotti, lei ripara le crepe e ferite intorno e dentro di me. E mentre mi trascina via, io divento sua prigioniera. La mia pelle frankensteiniana si fa più verde: la cantina è una torre sigillata ed io, la draghessa al suo interno. Potente, e arresa. Non so cosa accadrà. Ho nostalgia di quelle notti d’estate quando sapevo cadere, non avevo idea di quanto fossi saggia allora. Noi, anime immisurabili e sconosciute, dobbiamo essere leggere se vogliamo discendere, là dove tutto diventa cupo e oscuro.

La ragazza con i rollerblade

2. Sulla caduta, e altre considerazioni

Ho un disegno di Giuliana Rosso a casa; rappresenta una ragazza sdraiata a pancia in giù, o forse schiantata, con la faccia che poggia su una strada ciottolata. Mi guarda silenziosamente mentre scrivo, i suoi emojis tatuati sul viso sorridono ancora ma lei non rivela emozioni. Osservando le sue unghie arancioni ai bordi del foglio, noto la posizione delle mani, che sembrano abbracciare la superficie ruvida su cui lei si ritrova… I personaggi che popolano le tele, i disegni e le sculture di Giuliana Rosso spesso risultano caduti, magneticamente attratti al suolo. Con teste in giù, piedi all’aria, facce a terra, ferite aperte e sguardi assorti, essi capitolano e soccombono in foreste, laghi, camere da letto, vasche da bagno e altri luoghi allucinanti in cui l’ordinario assume toni oscuri e soprannaturali. Giacciono lì, serenamente assenti, si accasciano a terra e lasciano entrare dentro di se forze esterne. La loro caduta appartiene alla vulnerabilità, alla goffaggine e all’errore, ma anche alla beatitudine e alla contemplazione. Ciò che rende il tutto inquietante non è la caduta in sé, ma la reazione a questa: sconcertante e ambigua. Una volta avvenuto il crollo, tutto diventa magico. Energia, aure, spiriti della foresta e altre cose invisibili diventano visibili, e la follia della realtà permea attraverso colori psichedelici e altamente sintetici, da incubo. Irreale, più che surreale, il lavoro di Giuliana Rosso offre versioni specifiche di una realtà che è emotiva, intuitiva e altamente suggestionabile. Le storie che i suoi personaggi perturbanti raccontano non offrono descrizioni realistiche, né soluzioni chiare. Sono frammenti di un presente traumatizzato; rispecchiano le paure di un mondo in trasformazione, ricordandoci come il rinnovo realmente avvenga. Le opere di Giuliana Rosso sono come i teenager che rappresentano: selvatiche e fragili, come un tagliente filo d’erba.

Caterina Avataneo

⋆ group exhibition ⋆

Artists:

Simone dei Crocifissi, Dosso Dossi, Caravaggio, Andrea Vaccaro, Artemisia Gentileschi, Jusepe de Ribera, Francisco Goya y Lucientes, Giacomo Balla, Egon Schiele, Giorgio De Chirico, Asger Jorn, Pinot Gallizio, Costant, Jan Kotìk, Piero Simondo, Gallizio jr, Alexej von Jawlensky, Pablo Picasso, George Grosz, Alberto Giacometti, Piero Manzoni, Isa Genzken, Anselm Kiefer, Wael Shawky, Jordan Wolfson, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Bas Jan Ader, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Fabio Mauri, Enzo Cucchi, Emilio Vedova, Anna Boghiguian, Monica Bonvicini, Regina Josè Galindo, Pierre Huyghe, William Kentridge, Chris Burden, Bracha L. Ettinger, Werner Herzog, Cecily Brown, Beau Dick, Lin May Saeed, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Ed Atkins, Goshka Macuga, Cally Spooner, Nalini Malani, Susan Philipsz, Miao Ying, Marzia Migliora, Patrizio di Massimo, Giuliana Rosso

⸺⸻

Excerpt from the book: Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea - La storia e le collezioni. Volume 2. Allemandi, 2023.

Text by Marianna Vecellio

Giuliana Rosso ( Chivasso, Torino, Italia, 1992)

La ricerca di Giuliana Rosso si muove tra pittura, disegno e installazioni ambientali. Un universo di adolescenti sospesi in un immaginario distopico nutrito di suggestioni magiche, cultura giovanile e motti popolari conduce l'artista verso l'indagine degli angoli più nascosti delle coscienze e del nonsense come luogo in cui scaturiscono realtà inconsuete. Privilegiando l’approccio pittorico, le sue opere sono realizzate con materiali infantili o su cartapesta o temporanei come la terra. L'uso del disegno, eseguito con tecniche miste come pastelli a cera o acrilici fluorescenti con cui interviene direttamente sul muro per creare scenari in cui incorporare i singoli disegni, contribuisce alla costruzione di ambientazioni vivaci e inquietanti allo stesso tempo. Interessata ai temi urgenti del cambiamento climatico e all'ecologia, Rosso realizza opere effimere e deperibili: definite dall'artista "espressioni di realtà aumentata dai mezzi poveri ", esse sfruttano le architetture dei luoghi in cui si trovano trasformandole in ambienti perturbanti. Finché quel che fantastichiamo è stato, è un ampio intervento ambientale, realizzato appositamente per la mostra Espressioni. La proposizione al Castello di Rivoli, che trasforma lo spazio in un luogo paradossale. Il titolo dell’opera è tratto da una poesia di Emily Dickinson del 1867 che, utilizzando la metafora dell’ape, narra la fine dell'estate e il sopraggiungere di qualcosa di inaspettato. Allestito nell'angolo della parete della sala del Museo, un disegno su carta si espande in una dimensione fluida e aumentata al di fuori del suo confine dando vita a un'esplosione di elettricità che irradia figure e oggetti fantastici: un esploratore mascherato sta facendo un lungo viaggio tra le mura della propria casa, polli militari, torte di compleanno una ragazza che guarda da una finestra immersa in una luce crepuscolare, pietre di cartapesta dai colori acidi, un giovane sdraiato con indosso una mascherina a forma di fiore che gioca con una bambola con una tuta antivirus. L'opera è un'isola catalizzatrice", un luogo collocabile tra immaginazione, sogno e realtà capace di incorporare anche lo spettatore.

⋆ duo exhibition: Giuliana Rosso & Rory Pilgrim⋆

Exhibition press release by Caterina Avataneo:

Open Space and Pina are pleased to present a project by Rory Pilgrim and Giuliana Rosso, unfolding through a special mail-art commission, an edition of 100, available via Open

Space and a show at Pina (Vienna), opening in May 2021.

Curated by Caterina Avataneo.

Creating parallels between puberty, history and wilderness- all of dynamic character - the project proposes to look at transformative, chaotic, conflictual and emotional existence as a moment of (re)discovery of the world. Teenage becomes a point of access to frictional states; a way to consider their generative empathic potential for establishing new ways to be in the world at the end of History, as understood by western modernity.

But I doubt, I tremble, I see (shaking edges and) the wild thorn tree brings together the work of Rory Pilgrim and Giuliana Rosso, but also the lives of Liam Neupert, Declan, Piper, Erikk, Jared and some fictional characters. They constitute different subjectivities, ages and agencies but all share a state of crisis, and the impulse for rebellion and change. With their exposed passions, internal conflicts and unstable being, they suggest that vulnerability is key for an empathic understanding of the world. They are geared to really doubt - to tremble - and thus to see. The power they care about is not controlling the future, but overwriting the past to shake off a very final end. Their present is of struggle, relational rather than exploitative, transformative rather than calcified and that’s where, as in nature and in history, renewal germinates. They can give new edges to old forms...

But let’s step back, and start from the very beginning.

In 2019 Rory Pilgrim gathered 10 Youth Climate Activists from Boise and other small towns in Idaho USA - Liam Neupert was one of them. Over a period of 2 months of workshops, field trips, vlogs and assemblies, Rory nurtured the conditions for an intimate exchange, where to explore personal struggles in a time of climate crisis. The 10 young activists shared how climate change interconnects with other aspects of their lives

including family, religion, friendship, fighting for gender equality and the essential need for a home. Rory captured these moments in the 50 minute long film The Undercurrent, exploring

the emotional means we have - collectively and individually- to articulate crisis while also catalyzing change.

The Undercurrent became the starting point for a dialogue with Giuliana Rosso, whose paintings, drawings and papier-mâché sculptures present seemingly somber atmospheres that allow to investigate interiority and its shadows, from where unusual (alternative) realities spring up. The subjects of Giuliana’s work too, are teenagers and young adults, often showing paradoxical and contradictory - emotional rather than rational - relationships with the environment that surrounds them. They are able to abandon themselves to moments of illusion, paralysis and destruction of one’s axiomatic interpretation of what is possible, whilst connecting with the real. Through them, fears materialize, imaginary presences become real and invisible

powers manifest as perceptible.

But I doubt, I tremble, I see (shaking edges and) the wild thorn tree takes its title from the 1931 novel “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf but overwrites it, allowing for interpretation. You too can

participate...

RORY PILGRIM (b. 1988, UK) works in a wide range of media including songwriting, composing music, film, music video, text, drawing and live performances. Centred on emancipatory concerns, Pilgrim aims to challenge the nature of how we come together, speak, listen and strive for social change through sharing and voicing personal experience. Strong-

ly influenced by the origins of activist, feminist and socially engaged art, Pilgrim works with others through a different methods of dialogue, collaboration and workshops. In an age of increasing technological interaction, Rory’s work creates connections between activism, spirituality, music and how we form community locally and globally from both beyond and behind our screens. Solo Shows include: Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2020), Between Bridges, Berlin (2019)

Andriesse-Eyck Gallery, Amsterdam NL (2018), South London Gallery (2018), Plymouth Art Centre, Plymouth (2017), Flat Time House, London (2016), Site Gallery, Sheffield (2016) and sic! Raum für Kunst, Luzern CH (2014). In 2019, Pilgrim was the winner of the Prix de Rome.

GIULIANA ROSSO (b.1992, Italy) is an artist whose research moves between painting and drawing, with three-dimensional contaminations. She investigates interiority and its shadows, the most hidden corners of conscience as well as moments suspended between the present and the future. The imaginary of her works often relate to proverbs, fairy tales and premonitions, popular imagination inhabited by spirits and ancient fears; as well as hypnagogic somnolence, altered states and alternative realities. Using delicate materials and puberty subjects, she celebrates the fragility and fears of the individual through a contemporary reinterpretation of universal themes of transition, change and anxiety. Recent solo shows include:

Virginia Bianchi Gallery, Bologna IT (2020); Almanac, Torino IT (2019); VEDA, Florence IT (2018). She is currently showing as part of a group show at Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte

Contemporanea, Rivoli IT.

THE PROJECT is part of a series started in 2019 by Caterina Avataneo, based on duo-collaborations between artists with divergent practices, employing very different concerns, mediums or aesthetic languages. The intent is to contribute to the shaping of the final show through conversation and togetherness, letting the project unfold organically and differently every time. Generally sharing one single room, the space becomes an active agent in which the act of interweaving divergent practices generates new work or new links between existing works, exploring the collaborative nature of producing meaning out of differences. The first collaboration happened in 2019 with Anna Barham & Chiara Camoni at Arcade (London); then in 2020 with Diego Delas & Rolf Nowotny at HAUS (Wien).

The experiment will recur in April 2022 at SixtyEight Art Institute (Copenhagen), with Jeremiah Day & Anastasia Sosunova.

CATERINA AVATANEO (b. 1989, Italy) is a curator based between London and Turin. She was awarded the 2017 NEON

Curatorial Award by The Neon Foundation and Whitechapel

Gallery and her curatorial projects have appeared in Institutions and galleries including: Zabludowicz Collection, Kunstraum, White Crypt, Gossamer Fog, Austrian Cultural Forum (all London); Britta Rettberg (Munich) and SixtyEight Art Institute (Copenaghen). Since 2018 she is Associate Curator at Arcade London & Brussels and Curatorial Assistant on assigned projects at Serpentine Galleries. Recently she was curator in residence at RUPERT (Vilnius) and Salzburger Kunstverein

(Salzburg) as well as Assistant Curator of the Lithuanian Pavilion for the 58th Venice Biennale, winner of the Golden Lion.

⋆solo exhibition⋆

Exhibition press release by Matteo Mottin:

A kid, sitting on a fence, gives his back to a giant wave that is about to sweep him away. Opposite, a child wrapped in a blanket, sitting on a carpet with prints of planes, lets the controller of a video game slip out of his hands. Between the two, another child, on hands and knees, the fin of a shark on his back. Behind us, a girl lying on a pillow, on her face a beauty mask that looks like a pancake.

In addition to an attitude of passivity towards what surrounds them, the subjects of Giuliana Rosso's works for "He Heard with His Dead Ear" share a mysterious duplicity of the gaze. There is something in their eyes, a passage from anger to disenchantment, something that makes their intentions difficult to interpret, and perhaps it is precisely that something that alienates them and distracts them from their context, making them absent from the circumstances in which they are immersed.

Perhaps they are all thinking of the same thing, of a story that they heard before, and that suddenly came back to mind, like a bubble of steam rising to the surface, the first sign of an imminent underwater eruption.

The story could be this one:

On August 22, 1570, the Ottomans besieged Famagusta, a fortress city on the eastern coast of the island of Cyprus. To command its defense is the Venetian Marcantonio Bragadin, rector of the city. The Venetian garrison is composed of about 6000 men, while the Turkish army, commanded by Lala Kara Mustafa Pascià, has 200,000 armed men, equipped with 1,500 guns, and supported by 150 ships that block the flow of supplies and reinforcements.

In the same year, in Venice, Titian asks his workshop to prepare a new large canvas and sketches its future composition.

Meanwhile, the resistance of Famagusta continues, despite the disparity of the forces on the ground and the scarce aid from the Venetian Republic. It is not clear why the Serenissima decided not to intervene and help the besieged; it is believed that some Venetian commanders preferred to save military resources to be able then to have the command in the clash after the fall of the city, in the battle of Lepanto.

Once the food and ammunition were over, on 1 August 1571, after almost a year from the beginning of the siege, Bragadin was forced to declare the surrender of the city. The Turkish commander does not comply with the conditions of the surrender contract which allows civilians and soldiers to escape. Bragadin is imprisoned, mutilated (his ears and nose are cut off) and locked for twelve days in a tiny cage left in the sun, with very little water and very little food, subjected to the scorn of the winners. On the fourth day the Turks offer him freedom if he converts to Islam, but Bragadin refuses.

On August 17, 1571 they release him from prison almost lifeless, with severe burns on his body, they hung him on the mast of his ship and massacred him with over a hundred lashes, then forced him to carry on his shoulder a large basket full of stones and sand through the streets of Famagusta, until he collapses. They take him back to the main square of the city, chain him to a column and skin him alive, starting from the head. His dismembered limbs are distributed among the various departments of the army and the skin, filled with straw and sewn up, is covered with military insignia and carried on horseback by an ox in procession through Famagusta, to then be hoisted on the pole of a galley and brought to Constantinople.

The same year, in Venice, Titian learns of the end of Bragadin. He knows that the Republic of Venice will be part of the Holy League and that they will face the Ottoman Empire in Lepanto in October, too late to save his fellow citizen. He looks at the water of the lagoon, then looks up and imagines he intercepts Bragadin's gaze 2300 kilometers away. He can't understand how come his own clients of a lifetime have preferred to let him die in that horrible way. "But who am I to judge these things?" Think about the skin, all the skin he painted, and the skinned one filled with straw at the mercy of the wind on a ship to Constantinople. He remembers Marsia, the satyr skinned alive by Apollo after losing the impossible challenge of a musical contest against him.

In the following five years, until his death, Titian works at the painting. At the center the satyr, hung upside down from a tree, is skinned by two characters while others witness the punishment. None of these, however, realizes that themselves are skinned by the painter's hand, along with everything that appears in the painting. He decides to enter the scene and portray himself as Midas, the king condemned to die of hunger after he was granted the desire of turning everything he touched into gold, and that was judge of the competition between the satyr and Apollo. Him, the painter with the golden touch, in the role of the man who dared to judge a god, judge of his work within the work itself, skinned like the other characters while reflecting on the moral choices of his clients. The only part that spares is the face of Marsia, whose gaze observes the spectator, observes Tiziano, observes the skin of Bragadin and the fleet of the Holy League that in less than half an hour decimates the Turks in front of Lepanto.

In addition to an attitude of aggressiveness towards their surroundings, the subjects of Giuliana Rosso's works for "He Heard with His Dead Ear" share a mysterious duplicity in their eyes. There is something in their eyes, a passage from disenchantment to anger, something that makes their intentions difficult to interpret, and perhaps it is precisely that something that ties them to their context, making them completely masters of the circumstances in which they are immersed.

A kid, sitting on a fence, evokes a giant wave that will break at his command. Opposite, a child wrapped in a blanket, sitting on a carpet with prints of planets, has just set up a new lighting for the space. Between the two, another child, on his back the fin of a shark, swims in this light towards the spectators. Behind us, a girl is getting out of bed, looking at the sea behind us.

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⋆The exhibition was supported by Stella Aruanno onlus

⋆solo exhibition⋆

Exhibition press release by Treti Galaxie:

Through a painting style made with fragile materials such as spolvero paper, chalks, charcoal and papier-mâché, Giuliana Rosso creates a composite installation that celebrates the fragility of the individual through a contemporary reinterpretation of universal themes related to art history and popular culture.

In the show, a painted and flipped over vault takes the place of the gallery floor, collapsed during the 1966 flood of the Arno. The intervention looks like the image of an ideal frescoed ceiling reflected on the surface of the water that once flooded the space. The overturning also affects the subject of the painting, which concerns a particular interpretation of the Assumption.

*The exhibition is entirely made of biodegradable materials and can be 100% recycled.

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Tramite una pittura realizzata con materiali fragili, come carta da spolvero, gessetti, carboncino e cartapesta, Giuliana Rosso crea una installazione composita che celebra la fragilità dell’individuo attraverso una rilettura in chiave contemporanea di temi universali legati alla storia dell’arte e alla cultura popolare.

In mostra, una volta dipinta e rovesciata prende il posto del pavimento della galleria, crollato durante l’alluvione di Firenze del 1966. L’intervento si presenta come l’immagine di un ideale soffitto affrescato riflessa sulla superficie dell’acqua che un tempo inondò lo spazio. Il ribaltamento interessa anche il soggetto, che riguarda una particolare interpretazione del tema dell’Assunzione.

*La mostra è interamente realizzata con materiali biodegradabili e può essere riciclata al 100%.

⋆ group exhibition⋆

Artists: Dafne Boggeri, Caterina De Nicola, Andrea De Stefani, Lorenza Longhi, Andrea Magnani, Michele Rizzo, Giuliana Rosso

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Excerpt from the book: Capriccio 2000. A slice of electronic dance music in millennial Italy. Published by CTRL BOOKS, 2019 :

Text by Jeppe Ugelvig

Giuliana Rosso considers painting to be the most direct and transparent form of representation, allowing her to enter into a dialogue with the sensations, moods, and atmospheres of the human psyche beyond language. Working with oil painting and graphite, Rosso produces gloomy nightscapes and unsettling interior scenes, often featuring listless, neon-hued youths in bizarre poses, or seemingly transforming into monstrous creatures. In her work, the figure of the teenager embodies the ambiguous relationship between the human and its surroundings, as these characters lose themselves in moments of illusion, paralysis and destruction. In Rosso’s work, references from literature and the iconology of classical art history are subverted by inserting signifiers of contemporary youth culture sourced from magazines and Instagram such as smartphones, roller blades, and bubble tea. The surreal, cartoon-like character of her figures resist being read as particular individuals or as part of any larger cultural commentary, instead working to evoke a mood that draws on myth, magic, and nightmare. Rosso’s painterly precision culminates in her free-standing sculptures, formed in papier-mâché and gypsum, where she extends the layered logic of painting into three-dimensional space through textured surfaces of pastel crayon. Her work I vetri rotti balleranno per la notte (2019), for example, depicts a collapsed body, its face caught in grotesque paralysis while its hands have transformed into animal claws. Here, monstrosity is extended as a theme of art history to a central vision of contemporary youth culture, speaking to the surreal and mystical unconscious of the human experience.

⋆solo exhibition⋆

⋆solo exhibition⋆

Exhibition press release by Matteo Mottin:

Kurt Vonnegut ha scritto una cosa che continua a tornarmi in mente ogni volta che penso al lavoro di Giuliana. Non ricordo in quale libro l'ho letta, ma cerco di riassumerla:

Sono gli ultimi mesi della seconda guerra mondiale, Vonnegut è prigioniero di guerra e si trova in una grotta sotto ad un mattatoio assieme ad altri soldati prigionieri durante il bombardamento di Dresda. Loro sono al sicuro, e non sanno ancora che gli attacchi con migliaia di tonnellate di bombe esplosive e incendiarie sganciate da Stati Uniti e Regno Unito avrebbero causato un numero ad oggi ancora incalcolato di morti. Dai rumori, capiscono che la situazione è molto grave. Ed ecco il passaggio che continua a tornarmi in testa: nel silenzio rotto solo dalle bombe, all'improvviso, uno dei soldati prigionieri, imitando la voce della regina Elisabetta e storpiandone l'accento, dice: "Chissà come se la caverà la povera gente stanotte".

Vonnegut scrive che nessuno rise alla battuta, che in effetti non faceva ridere, ma percepì che tutti furono sollevati che in quella situazione tragica qualcuno avesse almeno detto qualcosa. Quello che fa Giuliana ovviamente non c'entra nulla con i bombardamenti e la guerra: ho citato questo pezzo perché mi evoca la stessa sensazione che provo guardando i suoi lavori, una sensazione che svanirebbe se cercassi di

tradurla in parole - cosa che quindi non cercherò neppure di fare. Vorrei invece suggerirvi uno dei possibili modi con cui iniziare a guardare le sue opere. Come in quella battuta detta a sproposito ma al momento giusto, nei suoi lavori Giuliana è come se inserisse volutamente una distanza tra quello che presenta e il come lo presenta. A livello superficiale trattano del lato che preferiamo dimenticare o su cui cerchiamo di non soffermarci dell'adolescenza, personaggi dall'atteggiamento infantile che cercano affetto, o anche solo un confronto, in entità da loro immaginate. Colori molto vivaci danno forma a situazioni inquietanti, le evidenziano e ce ne distraggono allo stesso tempo, creando una particolare empatia con lo spettatore. Assecondando questa empatia, si intuisce che forse per lei i soggetti in fondo sono solo un pretesto, una costruzione per iniziare un dialogo più profondo con chi guarda, dialogo che poi continua attraverso il modo in cui gestisce la pittura, l'attenzione per i supporti su cui decide di stenderla, il rapporto tra questi supporti e le pareti che li dovranno reggere. Ora, in fondo a Via Carena, poco distante dallo SpazioBuonasera vive una vecchia signora con la barba. Ce l'ha piuttosto lunga e nera. Le ho chiesto perché non se la taglia. Mi ha detto, "Se lo facessi, nessuno mi noterebbe".