alazzo Merulana, in synergy with the Elena and Claudio Cerasi Foundation and CoopCulture, is pleased to host the exhibition of the painter Peter Flaccus, "The painting is a place", curated by Francesco Cochetti.

American by birth and training, Peter Flaccus, in the early 90s, chose to move to Rome, where the encounter with classical art led to a turning point in his creative path, with the abandonment of painting oil in favor of an ancient technique, encaustic painting.

“The gestures of our ancestors live in our gestures”: this is the theme that Peter Flaccus carries out in the practice of his paintings. His use of the encaustic technique pursues a method and rhythm of work which, starting with the Greeks, have discontinuously marked the conscience of Western artists.

The term from the Greek enkaiein "to burn", refers to the heat treatment which concludes a process in which the beeswax, melted, mixed with pigments and resin is then spread on a surface and manipulated.

In these works Peter Flacus applies hot, colored wax to a board until it cools and sets; then he adds more layers of color to scratch them here and there, until the gestures of covering and uncovering create a luminous surface that both reflects and absorbs the external light.

Pliny, in his natural history, describes the method and the unusual resistance of the surfaces produced with this technique and notes how the paint applied to ships in this way becomes unaffected by the action of the sun, sea water or wind.

Thus Peter Flaccus' paintings produce the extraordinary, immediately perceptible effect of a radiant human presence, together with the momentary appearance of the stratifications of time – which is the time the painter needs to bring out the image on the surface, the time necessary for the manifestation of his intentions; thus the time of the painters of the past and of the gestures of the past, including his own, remains suspended in the deepest layers of the work.

The painter moves away from the conventions of painting as a window and as a relief – the representation and accumulation of material – to approach the pure relationship between color and light. In this way, color and light acquire their own function, relating to each other only within the single work, independently of any external reference.

Looking at the painter's movements over time, the eye moves from track to track, thus creating effects of depth and emergent apparition. Beneath the luminous surface of the work, the eye traverses shifting areas of transparency and opacity. Sometimes the surface of the wooden base is seen and sometimes a cut filled with wax stands out as a scar.

Organic images associated with Roman colors – light sepia, grey, red and ocher – produce a sense of cultural fossilization, as if the luminous application of wax had retained ruins. The transience of memory, or its acceleration, are captured in the painter's gestures which remain within these layers of color and possess their quality.

The exhibition is included in the Palazzo Merulana Collection + Exhibition admission ticket

Full price €10.00
Reduced € 8.00 (Young people under 26, adults over 65, active teachers, Cartax2 holders, Lazio Youth card holders)
Free (children under 7, one teacher for every 10 students, one companion for every 10 people, disabled with companion, Palazzo Merulana Pass and Palazzo Merulana Young Pass holders, ICOM members, licensed tour guides) Booking fee €2.00