Otto Zoo is pleased to present Passaggi, a project by Davide Rivalta that groups together a series of his recent sculptures and paintings.

In his work, Rivalta directly turns to nature, above all to animals, to create an epiphany of images that shows them in a docile attitude that at times is in contrast to their majesty and the violence of our dealings with them. Large-scale sculptures in bronze or resin: lions that roll about on the ground, rhinoceroses, wolves, buffaloes, horses. Rivalta photographs them in zoos and enclosures and then reproduces them without any further interpretative interventions, leaving the picture to reveal its representational force. As a result of this, their calm aspect brings to mind a tranquillity that does not belong to the animals we see in front of us, and it differs from the animal power that, instead, vibrates in the very form of their body, in the rapid strokes that model them, and that confers on the sculptures the suppressed energy of the demeanour imposed on them by the conditions of life in which they have been portrayed.

On show are two monumental bronze buffaloes; oil paintings superimposed with adhesive tape depicting wolves; a series of crops, and one of eagles. Within an internal garden we glimpse a calm horse made from white resin.

Davide Rivalta (Bologna 1974; he lives and works in Bologna) graduated from the fine arts academy in Bologna, and then studied with Cristina Iglesias at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. Among his recent solo shows mention should be made of Témoin a charge, curated by Philippe Jacopin, Neuchâtel; and Animare, curated by Bernard Bonnaz, Antibes. In recent years his work has been included in numerous group shows, including Modus, curated by Martina Cavallarin and Eleonora Frattarolo, a collateral event of the 57th Venice Biennale; Time is Out of Joint, curated by Cristiana Collu and Saretto Cincinelli, at the Galleria Nazionale, Rome; Un sogno fatto a Mantova, curated by Cristiana Collu and Saretto Cincinelli, Palazzo Te, Mantua.

In 2010 he took part in the first Aichi triennial show, Arts and Cities, curated by Akira Tatehata, Pier Luigi Tazzi, Jochen Volz, Haito Masahiko, Hinako Kasagi, Takashi Echigoya, and Eri Karatsu in Nagoya, Japan; he took part in Icastica, Arezzo, 2015, and in the Rimini drawing biennale, 2016. In 2015 the monograph Terre Promesse, edited by Pier Luigi Tazzi, was published (Silvana Editoriale, Milan).