STAR ROSE
CRAG Gallery is pleased to inaugurate the collective exhibition “STAR/ROSE” in the Casa Toesca space in Rivarolo Canavese, from 1 to 30 June 2024.
May is dedicated to roses. The days are getting longer, the climate is warmer, it’s time for flowering again, for us who go back to walking in the parks, for the art that welcomes back the optimistic push of the “good season” and for the roses that reach their maximum splendor this time of year.
The artists Luca Coser, Luca Freschi, Lorenzo Gnata, Jiri Hauschka, Chen Li, Elisabetta Mariuzzo, Enrico Smerilli, Giacomo Modolo, Oscar Contreras Rojas, Roger Coll and Giuliano Sale dialogue through their poetics on the symbolisms, allegories, myths and meanings that revolve around the rose, in the history of art but not only. They are artists with different origins who have expressed this theme with the sensitivity and personal background of each of them – the latter is a topic very close to the heart of CRAG Gallery, which for years has been committed to establishing dialogues between different countries, giving opportunities to artists emerging and more established to compete.
The rose, in its centuries-old history and in art, has always had a complex symbolism as it embodies totally contrasting semantics. It is a symbol of love, perfection, purity, passion, life and death and takes on different meanings depending on the context, color and thorns.
We see the red rose born from the blood and tears of the inconsolable Aphrodite faced with the death of her beloved Adonis. Myth in which the rose takes on the meaning of passionate, suffered love, so powerful as to conquer death. We find it in many fairy tales as a symbol of human life itself, the earthly one that goes from splendor to decay, and the subsequent one in which it is the bearer of new life and resurrection as a new opportunity to love. In the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast – which not surprisingly originates from the story of Cupid and Psyche – the rose seems to play the role of a vital clock that is about to expire and which, again, can challenge death and the curse only with the strength of true love.
It has always accompanied the loving gesture of giving: you offer a rose to give your love. However, in the past, it was also a symbol of secrecy, when, in the form of a seal, it was inserted into details of churches, confessionals, congregations; the Latin phrase sub-rosa meant a confidence made in absolute secrecy. In Christian tradition and icons it is often an allegory of paradise, purity, of a fertile but pure womb, of the Virgin Mary herself, but at the same time we find her as the crown of the martyrs, bearer of pain and symbol of the sacrifices made in the name of faith. For sailors, however, it is the guide towards new destinations, adventure, discovery – which in turn is the movement towards knowledge, Columbus’ voyage, the modern age – but also the compass that accompanies them back towards the safe haven of home. We find it, therefore, throughout the history of art, literature, poetry, in this eternal emotional discourse that links art and life, art and love, the emotional enjoyment of the artistic act that is good, sometimes bad, for Heart. She continues to be the bearer of these values also in contemporary art.
Let us think of Gina Pane’s famous performance in which, using her body as a catalyst for life’s experiences, she assigns the rose the task of inflicting pain on the body of a woman forced into her stereotyped role as wife, mother, housewife, therefore re-enacting a a sort of personal and at the same time shared martyrdom, or we think of the explosive force of the flower used as a weapon to destroy car windows, and symbolically as a feminist weapon, in Ever is over all by the artist Pipilotti Rist.
It is finally, with a simple thought taken from The Little Prince on the importance of this flower “It is the time you have lost for your rose that has made your rose so important” – by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, that we leave to works on display have the task of touching sensitive chords.
The exhibition is organized with the partnership of “Palazzo Rosa – Le Stanze della Cosmetica”.
Exhibition times:
Saturday and Sunday all day by appointment
