Alex Chalmers Transforms Pescara Gallery into a Perpetual Construction Site
The exhibition by Alex Chalmers at A Sud in Pescara, under the curation of Massimiliano Scuderi, embodies a concept of continuous transformation. Located in a postwar office on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, the gallery features construction meshes from Rome intended for the 2025 Jubilee, adorned with images of monuments and graffiti, including 'Teschio' and 'STOP FOSSIL FINANCE', whose creators remain unidentified. Visitors can engage with two locally sourced elevators. The piece Cut Line, initially designed for The Lightship LED video wall in Auckland, is reimagined as video and oil paintings. This exhibition links Pescara, founded in 1927 and bombed in 1943, to Rome’s ongoing revitalization, referencing the €500 million Caput Mundi project and the 'metodo Giubileo', positioning the gallery as a place of significance.
Key facts
- Alex Chalmers's exhibition at A Sud, Pescara, is curated by Massimiliano Scuderi.
- The show features construction meshes from Rome's 2025 Jubilee renewal projects, printed with Roman monuments by studio FM milano and overlaid with graffiti.
- Two locally sourced elevators are dismantled and reassembled as interactive Frankenstein constructions.
- Cut Line was originally commissioned for The Lightship, a large-scale LED video wall at the port of Auckland, New Zealand.
- Pescara was constituted by royal decree in 1927 and lost around eighty percent of its built centre to Allied bombing in 1943.
- The Caput Mundi initiative is a €500 million Italian funding programme financed by the EU's Next Generation EU via the PNRR.
- Rome's Jubilee closed with a figure in excess of thirty-three million, counted by crossings of a doorway rather than persons.
- The exhibition establishes correspondences between Pescara's removed historic fabric and Rome's permanently suspended renewal.
Entities
Artists
- Alex Chalmers
- Massimiliano Scuderi
- Arnold van Gennep
- Victor Turner
- Edith Turner
Institutions
- A Sud
- NERO Editions
- studio FM milano
- The Lightship
- European Union
- Next Generation EU
- PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan)
- Vatican
Locations
- Pescara
- Italy
- Rome
- Auckland
- New Zealand
- Mecca
- Jerusalem
- Caivano
- Terra dei Fuochi
- Corso Vittorio Emanuele II