Portfolio is one of the two exhibition cycles of the program Quotidiana at the Museo di Roma- Palazzo Braschi conceived and produced by La Quadriennale di Roma in collaboration with Roma Culture, Rome’s Superintendency for Cultural Heritage. Its aim is to explore a number of significant trends in 21st-century Italian art.
Once a month, eleven artists under the age of 35 are presented in the exhibition with a single work. Their research is narrated in a portfolio developed by the Curator-in-residence at La Quadriennale.Nell’ambito di Portfolio, undici artisti under 35 sono presentati in mostra una volta al mese con una sola opera. Their research is narrated in a portfolio developed by the Curator-in-residence at La Quadriennale.
The eighth exhibition of Portfolio (13 April – 7 May 2023) is dedicated to Marta Naturale (Mirano 1990).
Her practice explores the spaces closest to her. It does so in a perspective which starts from the intimacy of the home and then gradually extends into the public space. The artist uses pictorial language by packing together rarefied atmospheres, marked by the total absence of the human being and yet crowded with clues of humans’ passage through them. Her works are the fruit of a long and meticulous execution, which stands on an existential plane as a utopian attempt to suspend the passage of time, counteracting the erosion of a changing and unstable reality. To consult her portfolio, read here.
The exhibition brings together two small-format works — Riverbero and Passaggio, from 2023 —produced in oil on slate, a technique very present in the history of art, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thanks to this decision, which entails having a very dark surface, Marta Naturale manages to achieve a particular quality of light, arriving at the definition of a suspended atmosphere that envelops these two views of domestic interiors. In her practice, the artist chooses to represent only those environments closest to her, explorable relative to the dimensions of her own body. She thus manages to define the configuration of her own habitat. In this context, the space of the home plays an essential role. In the two paintings here presented, environments are described in great detail and investigated through thresholds — doors, windows, shutters — as passages for a symbolic passage to the outside. They are almost like filters that divide an environment devoted to protection from an “outside” understood as a space of otherness and discovery.
The exhibition venue is the Museo di Roma-Palazzo Braschi (Piazza di San Pantaleo, 10/Piazza Navona, 2). The admission is free without reservation. Opening hours: from Tuesday to Sunday 10.00 – 19.00
