On Saturday, 25 March, starting at 5:00pm, Ex Elettrofonica is pleased to announce the opening of TUFFO ROMA (ROME DIVE), the first solo show at the gallery for the artist and writer Gabriele Picco.
The artist offers a group of recent works that make use, as usual, of various media, including sculpture, drawing, and painting. Picco’s aim is to construct an environment to express his imagery with its signature surreal and light-hearted tone.

“I conceived of this exhibit as a dive, I called it TUFFO ROMA. It is me that, exhibiting in this city that I love, might imagine myself as an artist diving into the city, and into its most symbolic place, the Colosseum, but in reality, I like to imagine that the opposite is true, that it is Rome, its audience, that dives into me, into my work from the last few months.” G.P.

Narrative is key to the aesthetic experience provided by Picco. Each element bears a story, an intuition, a thought created between sleep and waking, a reflection on art history and its potential upheaval. The audience must play along and, as the artist himself says in his exhibit text, “Try observing these works as if they were trampolines, take a deep breath and dive in, no one is judging you.”

Born in Brescia in 1974, Picco has a degree in Art History from the State University of Milan. As a visual artist and writer, he has exhibited drawings, paintings, and sculptures in private spaces and museums in Italy and abroad. He has won several prizes and scholarships, including the New York Prize with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Michetti Prize, and the Alinovi Prize. Reviews, articles, interviews, and essays have appeared in major trade magazines and national newspapers, such as Flash Art, Tema Celeste, Flash Art international, Mousse, Segno, Inside Art, Arte Mondadori, Corriere della sera, and La Repubblica.
His work can be found in important collections, including the MoMA, New York, The Robert Lehman Foundation (USA), and the Montblanc Collection (Hamburg, Germany).
He has published two novels: Aureole in cerca di santi (Halos in Search of Saints), with Ponte alle Grazie (2002) and Cosa ti cade dagli occhi (What Falls from Your Eyes), with Mondadori (2010), translated into Spanish for Spain and South America (Seix Barral), into Portuguese (Contraponto), and into Catalan (Columna), and winner of the Viadana Youth Prize 2011. In 2021, he published the graphic novel New York era piena di zigomi (New York was Full of Cheekbones), (postmediabooks) and was a finalist for the Tuono Pettinato Prize 2022.

GABRIELE PICCO – TUFFO ROMA
25 March – 26 May 2023

LOCATION: Ex Elettrofonica – Vicolo di Sant’ Onofrio, 10 Rome
GETTING HERE: Vicolo Sant’Onofrio is just behind Piazza della Rovere, on the Lungotevere, near Santo Spirito in Sassia Hospital and Bambino Gesù Hospital.
INFO: +39 06 64760163, info@exelettrofonica.com, www.exelettrofonica.com