Monitor is pleased to announce Portuguese artist Sergio Carronha’s (Cascai, 1984) debut exhibition in Rome, following his first solo show Land and Purpose at Monitor Lisbon the previous year.

Carronha’s work is informed by landscapes, earth and all which it can be transformed and moulded into. His practice is tied to an intimate and sensorial relationship to nature. The countryside of the Alentejo, where the artist resides, is in fact the site and first source of inspiration for his poetic and ancestral art. It is precisely from this land – even in its acceptance of an atavistic element which evokes strength and regeneration – that Carronha obtains the raw material for his sculptures. His inspiration comes from a constant referencing to the material of his works and the rituals they evoke. Ceramic and terracotta sculptures realised through ancient techniques, graffiti depicted using natural materials, and totemic sculptures all recall artefacts, archaeological exhibits and ancient decorations, reinterpreted here in a contemporary context.

The core theme of the exhibition titled Scale of Permanence is tied to the planet and its potential to be a perfectly balanced system for the growth of trees and plants through various transitions, but also in a more profound way to the spirituality which is connected to Carronha’s personal vision of art. The installation at the gallery will feature stone, mineral and ceramic sculptures, and will articulate a veritable scale or an ordering of elements from ‘the most to the least permanent’ which will highlight key moments in the process of the growth of nature.

Every sculpture will be the bearer of its heritage of elemental meaning and recipient of a mystery, of the key to enter the innermost sanctum of the artist’s research.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an essay by the curator Margarida Mendes (Lisbon, 1985).