Saturday 22 April at 18.30 L'Ascensore presents L'grafting of contrast, a solo show by Carmelo Nicotra curated by Tabea Badami.

Looking at what Bernard Rudofsky has defined as spontaneous architecture (characterized by an anonymity deriving from the absence of an identifiable author) and moved by the need to redesign, to harmonize contrasts and restore dignity to what has been deprived of it, in his sculptures and in his collages Carmelo Nicotra carefully grafts different materials (marble, granite, concrete, brick, plaster, to name a few), combining them with pastel shades.

Precisely through the presence of soft colors, which submissively place themselves next to the rough concrete, the icy marble, the harsh granite, the artist creates sensitized surfaces, placating the heaviness of the material with a lyrical lightness, thanks to the elegance of the pinks , to the delicacy of the blues and the warmth of the yellows. [...] Fascinated by the suggestions that every place is capable of generating, Nicotra begins to freeze lines, profiles, geometries on paper, returning fragments, visions, constructions that defy the laws of statics, steps, balconies, roofs, constantly tracing a changing landscape and capturing its essence in grafted volumes and imaginative forms.

This conspicuous series of drawings, present in the exhibition, provides an access key to that long and laborious mental process of formulation and planning, which underlies the works of Nicotra. The sketches are an overture to be listened to with the curtain closed, in the uncertainty that the drape will open to show the stage. They are characters in search of an author, miraculously emerging from the sheets of paper that contained them. And while some wait in the wings, others make their entrance onto the stage.