The Mart in Rovereto reconfirms its focus on emerging artists and its commitment to promoting new voices in contemporary art with an exhibition featuring the work of the young Venetian painter Vittorio Marella (Venice, 1997).

The artist designed this project specifically for the spaces of the Rovereto museum. It explores the relationship between human beings and the environment, a theme he has already tackled in several large-format cycles of paintings, such as Verso il mondo nuovo [Towards the New World], exhibited in Rome at Palazzo Merulana in 2024. Working along the same lines, Marella presents a group of works from the series Under the weight of a heavy sun, which he began in 2024 at the Art Biennale.

 

The exhibition opens with four small canvases showing details at very close range. Almost like movie close-ups, the works focus on faces, partially covered by hands blocking the sunlight. These details create an unsettling and evocative preview of the large painting presented in the next room, an explosion of the narrative theme at the heart of the project.

 

The exhibition continues with eight large canvases – vast paintings that decorate walls or vaulted ceilings as an alternative to frescoes, used mainly in the Venetian tradition – all of which combine to create a painted ceiling of over ten metres in length. The monumental work depicts a group of young men and women lying under a scorching sun.

Although the scene appears to be ordinary, it conceals a few uncertainties. There are no clues to the setting – a body of water, a mountain, a lush or threatening horizon – that would complete the story and provide a meaningful scene. Not even the clothing worn by the subjects portrayed helps to establish the season represented.

Everything is suspended in an impetuous and present time where the desert background and youthfulness of the protagonists emerge as the only clues.

 

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