ALFREDO ROMANO
“Viaggio al termine della notte”
Opening: February 15th, 18:00 – 21:00
Exhibition duration: 15.02.24 – 30.03.24
Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center presents the work of the important Sicilian artist Alfredo Romano, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute and Giorgio Persano gallery from Turin.
This particular solo exhibition showcases two large installations, which Romano created during the 1990s, when the artist’s collaboration with ITCAC began, and more recent works from 2023.
The choice to present these artworks is based on the fact that they cover the historicity of Romano’s artistic creation. As it is mentioned by curator Fransesca Perotto: “Layered in Romano’s work, is first and foremost time. It is his constant unfolding and repetition that settle in his works and make them very special archives. Examples of these works are the archaic scrolls of books, repositories of an ancient knowledge, or his sound chairs that, in conversation, weave and scan a story incessantly.”
From the imposing installation of the black boxes, where it seems as if someone has reverently stored Romano’s cylinders-scrolls as heirlooms for future generations, of the papers that uncontrollably darken the walls from end to end, up until the artist’s latest series of artworks, where he has handled tar as his basic painting material, the narrative that interests Romano is quite heavy, yet clear: what does man keep through time. What does he protect, to what does he bestow generational or religious significance upon. How does he hold onto his historicity and identity amidst a society of acute conflict, and how he copes with isolation and loneliness.
Via the exhibition’s title, inspired by Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s novel of the same name, in which a medical student describes his encounters with human misery, sometimes in poignant and sometimes in disheartening manner, during the outbreak of the First World War, Romano urges us to think about what this journey looks like for anyone of us and how long – historically, for mankind – the duration of a dark night can be.