MEMMO FOUNDATION. ALMOST by AMELIA PICA

A new chapter of the Argentine artist's research focused on the analysis of the strategies implemented in communication and the role of language. Everyday objects used in a paradoxical overturning of semiotics and its rules. The Catachresis series, the extension of a word beyond the limits of its meaning, reveals how language and images can interact with each other, defining reality. The result is hybrid animal and anthropomorphic figures of “almost” characters.

The Memmo Foundation was founded in 1990 thanks to the work of Roberto Memmo, a lover of ancient art in all its forms of expression and in all its articulated beauty. It was precisely this passion of him that prompted him to open a private foundation so that the widest possible audience could enjoy these masterpieces of art history.

The Foundation began from its origins to set up high-level temporary exhibitions on the Palazzo Ruspoli's floor. Exhibitions made possible thanks to the collaboration between the co-founder and several of the most important museum institutions in the world, such as the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the British Museum in London or the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and also thanks to the curatorship of illustrious personalities such as Morris Bierbrier, Christopher White, Catherine Whistler, Sir Denis Mahon, Felipe Garin Llombart. The prestige of these exhibitions was consecrated by the influx of public who went to the Foundation to visit them, in less than 20 years the exhibitions of the Memmo Foundation were visited by over 3 million people.

In the 2000s Roberto Memmo decided to expand his assets and opened a branch of the Foundation in Lecce. In 2012, however, he decided to update his exhibition program by dedicating himself to contemporary art. The goal is to contribute to the development of a territorial cultural fabric in a global vision, connecting to international realities and promoting the interaction between artists and the city of Rome, its places, its stories, its excellence in field of artistic techniques and artisan tradition. The new mission wants to promote the present to contribute to the development of our future. Tools to achieve this will be the organization and production of exhibitions, performances, residencies, talks, conferences, educational workshops and publications. The exhibition hall was moved to the former stables of Palazzo Ruspoli opposite the old headquarters.

The Memmo Foundation organizes three to four contemporary exhibitions a year, both personal and collective. The solo shows are by artists who are not entirely emerging and not historicized who have often never exhibited in Rome if not even in Italy, mid-career artists, who can tackle spaces where an experience in management is needed. The group shows invite artists who have a relationship with Rome but who do not permanently reside in Rome, to testify how Rome still exerts a certain fascination on contemporary artists as in the past.

After the Oscar Murillo exhibition, the Foundation hosts the exhibition Almost by Amalia Pica curated by Francesco Stocchi until October 16, 2022. Argentine artist, born in 1978, trained in Buenos Aires and Amsterdam, currently lives and works in the English capital and has come to exhibit internationally.

Her artistic research that leads her to elaborate the 22 analogies exhibited, without captions, whose titles are written on the windows of the Foundation. Pica's research has its roots in the search for everyday objects that have a certain likelihood with parts of the human or animal body. New objects or mostly recovered from flea markets, disassembled and reassembled in order to create new hybridizations between objects. A project born blindly and developed within the Foundation on the occasion of this exhibition. Amalia Pica creates almost recognizable anatomical objects or almost anatomical beings, hence the title of the exhibition itself. Another inspiration comes from the puppets, works that dance in the air moved by the artist's threads, assemblages that not only suggest a movement but make it effective, real, concrete.

A harmony with the historical avant-gardes, in particular with Surrealism, the desire to represent everyday objects in an alienating, unexpected, bizarre form based on a linguistic game. For this characteristic exhibition was the collaboration with a producer and glass artist, a craftsman from the Roman territory, typical of the Foundation's policy which attempts to create links between local artisans and the artists it invites to exhibit. Small thinner glass elements punctuate the exhibition, defining the elegance of Amalia Pica's work, her elegance in assembly and her attention to detail.

The exhibition itinerary ends with six collages enclosed in six colored frames, which, like photographs, reflect the artistic elegance of Amalia Pica. Six works accompanied by catalogs, not necessarily by the Argentine artist, but which in some way refer to her poetics.

Photos made by Carlotta Ceccarini