With LA FORTUNA DELLA FRAGILITÀ – a double-solo exhibition of works by Marcela Calderón Andrade (b. 1991, Pasto, Colombia) and Tommaso Spazzini Villa (b. 1986, Milan, Italy) – Galleria Mattia De Luca reopens its doors in Rome to launch its Mattia De Luca projects. This standalone experimental investigation of the contemporary artistic scene joins the now well-established commitment to the great names of the twentieth century art in Italy and around the world.

LA FORTUNA DELLA FRAGILITÀ, the first act in this project, started from a conversation between Calderón Andrade and Spazzini Villa, two artists who explore themes that range from impermanence to the impossibility of interpreting reality in an unequivocal manner, through to the allure of change and the creativity of Nature.

Marcela Calderón Andrade’s works come from her observation of the complexities of relationships in nature, and they often consist of organic elements (seeds, leaves, the internal membrane of egg shells, and so on), which she uses to create sculptural works of untenable lightness.

For this exhibition, the Colombian artist has chosen to show seven works which are part of her project Enchura project. Hongo looks at the shape of a tiny mould (Rhizopus stolonifer) that grows in the skin of some fruits as they decay. Círculo-Infinito, Churo-Espiral and Vibración-Onda, from the Vestigio series, are made with the internal membranes of egg shells – a life-protecting structure – which are able to recompose
themselves after they have been broken. A process of destruction and reconstruction. The show ends with Red, a net woven with thin paper threads. Like in all her works, Marcela here calls on us to remember, repair and look after the network of fragility on an
emotional, physical, biological, and political level.

Tommaso Spazzini Villa is showing some works from his Ombre series: originally created as shadow boxes – small dioramas that paid tribute to Lucio Fontana’s Little Theatres – these Ombre, or “shadows”, find a new, broader, site-specific dimension in the space of the Mattia De Luca Projects. At the heart of the work is the shadow and its relationship with its source, through the creation of evanescent images and mysterious
silhouettes created by dry leaves. Together with these works, the artist also presents a video related to his Self Portraits, a still unexhibited participatory art project carried out in Italian prisons in 2018, which involved four hundred inmates who were asked to choose words from individual pages of The Odyssey, in order to recompose a sentence within each excerpt. A work with a wealth of cross-references and meanings of great contemporary relevance, between the non-measurable time of Homer’s poem and the contingent, intimate time of human suspension.

LA FORTUNA DELLA FRAGILITÀ will be accompanied by a catalogue.