Ombretta Gamberale and Futura Tittaferrante, ardito desìo

‘I am a stone. I repeat: a stone. I know you cannot understand me; I should explain these four words to you one by one and in groups of two and three and then all at once: what I mean when I say I, and when I say being, and when I say stone, and what it means to be stone, and one, a stone… maybe in this stone world there is no before or after: the time of stones is concentrated inside ourselves where eras thicken…’ 

Text by Italo Calvino on the occasion of Alberto Magnelli’s exhibition in Nice, 1981

The exhibition ardito desìo takes shape from the encounter between Ombretta Gamberale and Futura Tittaferrante in the neutral space of the walk, a liminal practice and space on the border between performance and social and political action, in which each has found her own research base, focused on the relationship between body and space and the changes the latter brings within the former. The encounter deepens thanks to a common theme that binds them: mountains and stone.

Futura has experienced the mountain as a practice, traversed it, explored it, challenged it, touched it, confronted it materially. Ombretta perceived the presence of stone and mountain in her body as a resulting vision of an emotion. As in two parallel paths, one travels through the matter in the experience of her body, in the matter, highlighting its movements between crumbling holes, signs, perturbations, temperature changes, the other adapts her body to the morphology of the mountain, scales the rock with her eyes, highlighting shapes, heights, differences in height, paths, almost like a geologist and an explorer who dialogue proceeding in small steps and with small appointments marked by juxtapositions, comparisons and stratifications.

They highlight harmonies and distortions through paper tears and intaglios. They look for elements of rupture through details and juxtapositions. They lose their sense of orientation, but remain anchored in materiality and a punctual sign.

The exhibition is accompanied by a limited edition publication printed in Risograph and bound by ziczic, Polignano a Mare

Ombretta Gamberale graduated in performing arts and worked in theater until 2013. In parallel, she cultivated an interest in drawing and graphic design. She studied at the European Institute of Design and the School of Arts and Crafts in Rome with engravers Maria Pina Bentivenga and Elisabetta Diamanti. She does not use a specific technique but storytelling, ranging from the often misused intaglio print, to digital printing, photography, painting, sign etching, and stitched thread, each used with decisive premise and inherent in the careful choice of paper for each project. His work has been selected for several printmaking and graphic arts awards and has participated in various exhibitions in Italy. She lives and works in Rome and is part of Muta studios at 194 Via Galla Placidia along with 13 other artists. 

Futura Tittaferrante began her career as a scenotechnician for theater graduating from Bologna and later began photographing in theater. Over the years, she exhibits between Italy, France and Malta founding and initiating performance projects within the still active, under new management, Maison Ventidue. She begins to print her own images and experiment with materials, drawing extensively in natural and chemical elements and archival materials. She etches, impresses, and physically acts on the prints. Her photographs and works become an artifact that cannot be reproduced. Today she works between Italy and abroad collaborating with the TBWA agency, Teatro di Roma, and the Istituto Cinecittà Luce. She hasa  gallery studio in Rome in the Monti district at Piazza della Suburra 6.