At the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome from 22 April to 27 August 2023, curated by Francesco Vezzoli and Stéphane Verger, the VITA DULCIS exhibition – produced by the Palaexpo Special Company and conceived together with the Roman National Museum and Studio Vezzoli – takes its cue from the most recent production by the artist to offer the public an unprecedented and surprising journey that combines contemporary art, archeology and cinema.

The chosen title VITA DULCIS, a Latinization of Federico Fellini's famous film La dolce vita, introduces and summarizes the agility with which the exhibition intends to move between different eras and contexts. The exhibition project - conceived for Palazzo delle Esposizioni - develops in seven thematic rooms connected by the central rotunda, which acts as an introduction, and combines works and archaeological finds preserved in the various locations of the Roman National Museum - well-known masterpieces and finds never exhibited to the public before now – to highly successful film clips such as Cabiria, the first Italian blockbuster dated 1914, written by Gabriele D'Annunzio, Federico Fellini's Satyricon, Derek Jarman's Sebastiane, Ridley Scott's Gladiator. Vezzoli's works, which incorporate elements of the ancient period or which are inspired by the ancient, constitute the third element of this dialogue.

In recent years, Francesco Vezzoli has developed his artistic practice by creating a bridge between the contemporary imagination and the history of art. A practice that led him to address his poetics to ancient art, the past and its icons, and to extricate himself from different languages, in a game of references and mixes between classical culture - solemn, eternal - and pop culture.