In collaboration with Villa Charities and with the support of Heritage Calabria, the Consulate General of Italy in Toronto and the Italian Cultural Institute are proud to present the exhibition ‘La Superficie Introvabile | The Unfindable Surface.’ Featuring the works of two Italian artists, Anna Romanello and Mario Martinelli, this exhibition is intended to celebrate the 2024 Contemporary Art Day in Toronto. Curated by Flavio Belli, the exhibition was inaugurated on 17 October and will be open to the public until 13 November at the Columbus Centre’s Joseph D. Carrier Art Gallery in Toronto. It features two artists from two different regions of Italy, highlighting distinct but complementary perspectives of the diverse Italian art scene, from the ancient to the hyper-modern.
Anna Romanello brings her southern Italian roots to the fore, combining the vibrant colours, textures and light of the Mediterranean with abstract interpretations of memory and place. Her artistic language is deeply influenced by Italo Calvino’s novel ‘Invisible Cities.’
Mario Martinelli, from Veneto, offers a stark contrast to Romanello’s southern landscapes with his sculptures and installations, which shift between light, shadow and form, looking more towards northern atmospheres. His reproduction of Michelangelo’s David is a tribute to the Florentine master, whereby Martinelli reinterprets the human form using wire mesh, creating intricate plays of light and shadow that evoke the chiaroscuro technique used by Renaissance artists.
Curator Flavio Belli’s aim is to bring these two artists together in a single exhibition space to suggest and explore the concept of the ‘unfindable surface’ – a metaphor for the complexity of Italian identity and its ever-changing contemporary reality.
