Saturday the 10th of May 2014 Antonio Cervasio (Neapolitan by birth, class of 1980) will be the one inaugurating the 5th stage of Romberg’s exhibition season.

Painting, sculpting and videos will be the protagonists of this new appointment in the ROOMBERG space project in Latina.

I’m going to bed early… said someone into Antonio Cervasio’s ear, suggesting anomalous directions of figuration, indicating surprisingly dizzying heights for a country –Italy- where in the past a lot of painting has preferred the late hours of the night and favoured dynamic comets (futurisms), the moon and the cosmos (metaphysical), the jarring sound of the night (informal), the appearances moving in the dark (surrealisms). Very few artists went to bed early, so as to favour the noblest parts of the day, the Mediterranean sun, the least slanting direction, in order to go beyond the heart of the familiar with its language, its present tense verbs, its pedagogical models.

Gastone Novelli was a solitary star who wrote down fragments of language on the daytime geography of the canvas. Mario Schifano knew the night of painting very well but he did not draw in the hours just after sunrise, when the city awakened from the numbness of the dark… but some happy exceptions remain, that are extended to Gianfranco Baruchello, Pablo Echaurren and few others, all incredibly “diurnal” outsiders.

Cervasio reveals to us today a possible cathartic space of painting: that of notions found again, of memories in the future tense, of a childishness that contains the antidote against the anonymity of the image. A painting that travels through youth with the iconographical order of achieved maturity: and it is demonstrated by the balance of the elements, the severity of the mark, the management, never random, of highly symbolical colour.

I’m going to bed early… this is what Cervasio seems to be telling us from his white world of small gestures, that have the clarity of daytime, the sharpness of the open eye, the sunny poetry of universal notes. Sun, water, courtyards, gardens, swings, pets, fishing rods… and then it becomes dark, tiredness creeps up on the body but the painting has already done its duty… it’s time to sleep.

The exhibition is curated by Italo Bergantini and Gianluca Marziani.

Romberg Gallery

Viale Le Corbusier, 39
Latina 04100 Italy
Ph. +39 0773 604788
Mob. +39 334 7105049
info@romberg.it
www.romberg.it

Opening hours

Tuesday - Saturday from 4pm to 8pm
Monday and mornings by appointment

Related images
  1. Antonio Cervasio, Senza titolo, 2013, pastelli ad olio su carta fabriano gsm 640, cm 76 x 56. Courtesy Romberg
  2. Antonio Cervasio, Chapeau, 2012, acrilico e pastelli ad olio su tela, cm 100 x 100. Courtesy Romberg
  3. Antonio Cervasio, Senza titolo, 2013, pastelli ad olio su carta fabriano gsm 640, cm 76 x 56. Courtesy Romberg