On Monday 3 February the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art hosts the solo exhibitions Just measuring unconsciousness by Gregorio Botta and Each Second is the last by Maria Elisabetta Novello, dedicated to the memory of Lea Mattarella. Two lines of the same poem by Emily Dickinson have been chosen for two parallel exhibitions, which reflect on the fragility and transience of existence, themes dear to the two artists who, starting from a common horizon, arrive at different results.

Just measuring uncosciousness. Gregorio Botta Measuring unawareness: like Tarkovskij's Stalker, the artist is a land surveyor who traces boundaries and trajectories in an unknown field. Gregorio Botta, taking advantage of the gallery spaces, builds a path in four stations, one for each room, almost an existential journey.

We start from the gravitas room: dozens of glass rods sprout from the wall on which stones are in an unstable and precarious balance. This wave of stones seems to end on Sisyphus, a mobile sculpture that welcomes at the ends of a thin glass bar - which turns on itself - a heavy stone and a light cup of wax.
On the opposite wall four paintings arranged in a similar way. The last, a light, airy painting made of diaphanous sheets suspended from glass, introduces the next room. That of the breath, in which a flatus seems to blow inside alabaster or wax forms.