The exhibition "A SHOW WITHOUT ROTHKO: Maja Bajevic | Marcello Mantegazza | Katrin Ströbel | Southern Anonymous Fresco Painter (17th century?)" will be inaugurated in Matera at 6:30 pm on November 23 at the headquarters of the SoutHeritage Foundation, in Via S. Potito 7, Rioni Sassi.

With an exhibition format that involves different contexts and locations, with a view to revitalizing and enjoying the historical-architectural heritage of the city of Matera and the Basilicata region, the exhibition pavilion of the SoutHeritage Foundation is currently located in the evocative "Chapel of the Seven Sorrows," a noble chapel - renovated and used as an exhibition space - part of a building dating back to the 16th century, one of the few examples of prestigious palatial architecture in the historic UNESCO heritage district of Rioni Sassi (Palazzo Viceconte, formerly Venusio).

As part of the institutional objective of revitalizing unused spaces, the foundation addresses fundamental themes such as architecture and the history of the spaces where reactivation is the result of a spatial modernization method that addresses the themes of protection, rehabilitation, and enhancement of existing buildings in a connection and alignment between idea, place, and form. In this context, the original intended use of the foundation's current headquarters as a chapel for religious use has been used as a starting point for the development of the exhibition project titled "A SHOW WITHOUT ROTHKO: Maja Bajevic, Marcello Mantegazza, Katrin Ströbel, Southern Anonymous Fresco Painter (17th century?)". In fact, if contemporary art has exploded its own definition by insisting that it depends on the context, this aspect has been used as raw material for this exhibition project that aims to relate the current exhibition space of the foundation (once a spiritual space and now an ecumenical space of art) in a spatio-temporal dialogue with a famous contemporary artwork, namely the "Rothko Chapel" (1965), a non-denominational chapel located in Houston, Texas, created by the artist and representative of Abstract Expressionism Mark Rothko (1903 - 1970).

The exhibition space thus becomes the ideal setting for a project in which the territory and architecture are no longer simply geographical locations and exhibition contexts, but become mediums themselves. In this perspective, the exhibition places at the center of the cultural experience not only the works of contemporary art that transform the volumes of historical architecture into sensitive spaces and containers of collective experiences, but also their symbolic value, in an arrangement that shifts the cultural experience towards a blend of languages between contemporary visual arts and museography. To reveal and offer a reinterpretation of the environments and their atmospheres, the works of the artists have been chosen: *Maja Bajevic, *Marcello Mantegazza, *Katrin Ströbel, *Southern Anonymous Fresco Painter (17th century?) and of course Mark Rothko as an absent protagonist whose work is implicitly present without suggesting a literal illustration. By shifting the focus from a famous immovable artwork (the Rothko Chapel in Houston) to a group of artistic practices (the research of the artists on display), the exhibition not only redistributes power to all participating artists but also generates a critical interrogation of its format.

The public is invited to reify the absence of the interreligious environment of Rothko's work by also considering the artists on display and challenging the privilege of presence over absence. The works on display, including installations, paintings, and videos, highlight transdisciplinary artistic positions that share a commitment to a regenerative and critical examination of rituals, spiritual practices, and memory, through spaces or surfaces understood as moments of reflection where criticism, metaphor, and dark irony blend and emphasize the multiple and diversified relationship between materiality and daily or ritual functions, highlighting the porosity and dynamism existing between cultural subjects and historical, religious, and philosophical matrices.