Fatmah: Contemporary Cluster Opens New Aventino Space with Group Show

Contemporary Cluster has inaugurated its new venue on Rome's Aventine Hill with the group exhibition 'Fatmah,' curated by Arnold Braho and directed by Giacomo Guidi. The space features a minimalist exterior with large windows and an irregular, jagged basement gallery. The show's title, Arabic for 'to open' or 'renew,' signals a fresh chapter. Guidi describes the exhibition as 'acid and hard,' emphasizing expressive rigor over fluidity. The 10 participating artists—Nicola Ghirardelli, Linus Rauch, Sofia Yesakova, Franziska Reinbothe, Jacopo Naccarato, Giuseppe Lo Cascio, Lorenzo Montinaro, Arvin Golrokh, and others—reference masters like Gino De Dominicis, Jannis Kounellis, Hermann Nitsch, Olaf Metzel, and Ettore Sottsass. Ghirardelli evokes Etruscan funerary objects; Rauch sews black umbrella fabric; Yesakova creates black, glacial works recalling Soviet constructivist spaces; Reinbothe, linked to the Düsseldorf school, assembles frames in violent collisions; Naccarato uses blue and resin for esoteric, metaphysical effects; Lo Cascio exhibits exact copies of Sottsass's filing cabinets in plasticine; Montinaro uses Carrara marble and bull blood in a vanitas-themed triptych; and Golrokh, discovered by Guidi at Fondazione Sandretto, presents oil paintings of troll-like figures in saturated landscapes, some with burnt-wood frames, exploring propaganda and cancel culture.