‘Peeks’: Luca del Fico’s art on display in Rome

Peeking is looking fleetingly, secretly but also paying attention. What the eyes observe in an infinitesimal fraction of time and which no other expression can convey better than “in the blink of an eye” is only the prelude to the subsequent vision of the mind, which makes the real world truly perceptible and therefore visible .

“Sbirciate” is Luca del Fico’s exhibition with a presentation by Duccio Trombadori which will be inaugurated on Wednesday 15 January at 5pm at the Marco Besso Foundation in Rome. The eight pictorial works on display are the stages of an exhibition itinerary in which the visitor is called to deal with themes that refer to the founding bases of the visual arts.

Starting from the relationship between observer and observed and passing through that between content and container we arrive at the meeting (clash) between light and shadow of which the well-known episode of Alexander the Great and Diogenes of Sinope constitutes the narrative expedient and at the relationship between copy and original presented showing the presumed original of the Wounded Amazon of Polykleitos, a bronze work from the 5th century BC known only through marble copies from the Roman era.

In the second part of the journey the spectator is led towards an increasingly solitary and exclusive dimension of “peeking”: the re-enactment of a work by Caravaggio that was destroyed, the first version of Saint Matthew and the angel; the hypothetical facade of Vermeer’s house through which the details of some of his works can be seen; and a special peek at Christ in the storm on the Sea of ​​Galileea painting by Rembrandt stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and not yet found. Finally, with the last work, the observer will only have to look at himself and, finishing the journey, with his steps he will find himself having drawn a path in the shape of an 8 or a stereoscopic perimeter tending towards infinity.

The exhibition will remain open until January 24, 2025.