The precision found in the new solo exhibition by Marina Paris (Sassoferrato, 1965), organised at the Contemporary Art Spazio Nuovo in Rome is surprising and invites visitors to carefully examine every small detail because nothing is left to chance: even the frames, for example, which protect precious images as if they were display cabinets in a church are guardians of memories, made of transparent brown or absorbent Cassel earth from which fragments of better times protrude and cause injury: the Italy of reconstruction, sunny gardens, smiles and democracy.
In this exhibition, all based around Aldo Rossi’s thought, his theoretical writings and, in particular, on the reflective assumption connected to the concept of fragment – which «expresses a hope, still a hope, and as such does not agree with scraps, which signifies a multitude or an assemblage of broken things» – we find a summer postcard on a grand scale. This work is situated at the end of the exhibition room, almost piercing the spectators’ gaze and giving the idea of exhibition design intended as a complete artwork in itself. The sentence Ravenna Marina – Seaside resort and beach can be read on the postcard, surmounted on a small marble slab reproducing the writing on the other side: «A souvenir and a democratic greeting. 1954».
Using an internal polysyndetic examination, Urban Fragments is a physical and metaphorical journey that moves between critical realism and rationalist architecture, historical corpus and geopolitical movement (displacement). In the 14 images that compose a lively rhythm on the right wall of the gallery and the 15 images which, on the left side, form a cloud, it is possible to discern a metaphysical thread, something supratemporal and suprahistorical, suprageographical and also erotic in the way in which the images break up and recompose fragments of memory that are too often lost.
These two groups of images are placed beside two large photographs, Domestic Space_13 (2010) and Interno (Interior, 2019), which freeze time and record a place that no longer has any evocative power because it has been modified by human intervention, radical restructuring.
To better understand what Paris does in these 29 works (all 42x32cm and dating from 2019), visitors must read the captions, keys that allow them to savour the atmospheric flow connected to mechanisms of condensation and movement, typical of Freudian Traumtheorie.
Mar Rosso (Red Sea) represents the breaking point – the artist cuts everything with her thumb, regulating randomness – and the juxtaposition of the geographical map connects places on the Globe with the Colosseum, the Amphitheatrum Flavium to be precise: this also happens in Fiume Blu (Blue River), Asia Minore (Asia Minor), Confine Iraniano (Iranian Border), West Coast, Messico and Albania. Everything in this exhibition is story and metaphor, a subtle thread linking matter and memory – a spatial synecdoche in which visitors can happily wander.
Marina Paris. Urban Fragments,curated by Guillaume Maitre and Paulo Perez Mouriz Spazio Nuovo,Rome
images: (cover 1) Piazza Venezia ,( PARTICOLARE) collage Mix (2) MARINA PARIS “Asia Minore,” 2019 collage, cm 42 x 32.jpg PH.Giorgio Benni (3) Mostra Urban Fragments by Marina Paris at Spazio Nuovo (4) DOMESTIC SPACE-13, 2010 cm 110 x 150 (5) INTERNO, 2019 STAMPA SU CARTA COTONE CM 42 X 32 (6) UN RICORDO E UN SALUTO DEMOCRATICO, STAMPA , MARMO , CM 100 X 155
