On Monday 15 May 2023 the entire RUFA community is invited to attend the presentation of OXYGEN, the book dedicated to the living sculpture by artist Alfio Mongelli, created in 2019 for the Wuhan Planning & Design Institute in China.
15 May 2023 at 5:00 PM – RUFA Space, Pastificio Cerere, via degli Ausoni 7.
Speakers at the event will include: Carmelo Strano, Raffaele Simongini, Davide Dormino, Mario Fois, Luigi Maccotta e Astrid Narguet – project curator – to narrate the creative journey of the Roman Maestro, who has been deeply connected to Chinese culture for more than a decade.
THE SCULPTURE: OXYGEN
Inaugurated in November 2019, shortly before the start of the pandemic, Oxygen is a large mobile steel composition that, through its dynamic reflective orbits, transforms the geometric formula from which it is inspired – O2 – by expanding it into space beyond its two-dimensionality.
The living sculpture interacts with nature and the surrounding urban fabric to the rhythm of the interrelationships of the globalised world. The work reproduces the internal dynamics conceptually located at the crossroads of a dual heritage, eastern and western, it imposes itself at the rhythm of the relations of the globalised world but in a timeless condition, an expression of man’s harmony with the environment and a symbol of the desire to “return to free-form breathing, without conditioning, without hesitation”.
The desire is thus to awaken awareness of ecological issues and environmental disasters through a universal language, that of nature.
With this latest creation, Master Mongelli confirms his personal link with the ‘middle country’, which has been in existence for more than a decade. Already in 2007 he exhibited in China, at the Tsinghua University, Academy of Art and Design, in the second edition of the international exhibition “Art and Science”; in 2008 he was selected among the twenty world-class artists representing Italian art at the Beijing Olympics; in 2010 he took part in the Shanghai Expo at the “Sculpture for riverside landscaping belt and the site of world”.
Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi Montalcini wrote: “The physical-mathematical rigour that characterises Alfio Mongelli’s works is exalted by the expressive freedom that rejects all scientific schematism. The unity and synthesis achieved in his creations, whether these large sculptures made of stainless steel or expressed in a graphic of geometric shapes, highlight the exceptional personality of the artist among the most representative of contemporary art”.
EVENT PROGRAMME
Speakers:
Alfio Mongelli – Artist, President and RUFA founder
Davide Dormino – Artist, RUFA lecturer
Mario Fois – Visual designer
Luigi Maccotta – Former Ambassador and Head of the Italian Delegation to the International Holocaust Rememberance Alliance
Astrid Narguet – Curator and Gallery Otto Director
Raffaele Simongini – Contemporary art expert and documentary filmmaker, RUFA lecturer
Carmelo Strano – Philosopher, critic and essayist
Watch the event video
Look at the event photos
