Oliviero Rainaldi's 'Seconda Madre' Explores Motherhood as Dream Archetype

Oliviero Rainaldi (born 1975 in Carmanico Terme) presents 'Seconda Madre' at La Nuova Pesa gallery in Rome, a solo exhibition featuring five works spanning 1988 to 2025. After years of sculpture, the artist returns to painting, using only black and white to explore the unconscious and a suspended self between micro and macro worlds. The show includes a polyptych divided into three acts: 'l’invito' (the invitation), 'l’abbraccio' (the embrace), and 'la mutazione' (the mutation). The thematic core is maternity, not in a biological sense but as a universal archetype. Rainaldi describes 'the second mother' as the one who responds in dreams, revisiting the maternal icon with an intensity that transcends natural bonds, becoming an engram saturated with personal and cultural implications. The human figure dissolves into an enigmatic, suspended existential primitivism, where embracing bodies and silhouettes dominate a dreamlike dimension oscillating between figuration and abstraction, attempting to capture the invisible. The exhibition is curated by Francesca de Paolis.