Rome, anthology featuring Adrian Tranquilli's defeated superheroes at Auditorium Garage

From December 4, 2021 to March 6, 2022, theAuditorium Garage, Fondazione Musica per Roma ’s renovated 1,000-square-meter exhibition space dedicated to contemporary art, will host the anthological exhibition of Adrian Tranquilli (Melbourne, 1966) entitled An Unguarded Moment, curated by Antonello Tolve. Conceived and organized by Musica per Roma, under the patronage of the Lazio Region, the exhibition kicks off a cycle of Fondazione Musica per Roma exhibitions through which to emphasize the centrality of the arts in the processes of transformation of society and to experiment with dialogues and hybridizations between different forms of expression and new technologies.

After several years of absence, Tranquilli returns with this exhibition project in the public institutions of the Capital: visitors will be able to admire more than fifty works in an unprecedented itinerary consisting of environmental installationswith a strong visual impact. Installations created especially for the occasion open and close the tour, but important stages of the artist’s production from the late 1990s to the present are also retraced.

The exhibition is also designed to highlight for the first time the significant role that music plays in Tranquilli’s production. Through videos, installations, sculptures, photographs and sound interventions, Adrian Tranquilli stages his visual universe built through references to the icons that populate our collective imagination. In his work, history and current events, real and imaginary figures, (super)heroes and their antagonists are combined, resulting in a whole that becomes an episodic tale. Each episode is thus intended to be an invitation to reflect on the cultural model and the state of crisis into which it has fallen.

Trained through studies in cultural anthropology, the artist shares the conviction expressed by Claude Lévi-Strauss, namely, “I could demonstrate not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in the minds of men, without them being informed of this fact.” Starting from this principle, Tranquilli developed his research, focusing it on issues related tocultural identity. Beginning with epic narratives and myth structures, he has focused on modern transpositions of these narratives, seeking to identify in them the traits that remain fundamental to the understanding of our cultural pattern. His main themes are the role of salvific figures, the hegemony of male power, andhuman action affecting nature. And in the new productions we find precisely these themes: the video The Unguarded Moment, the installations Every Me and Every You and Today Is a Liar. Here, too, in fact, the artist appropriates figures from the superhero universe spread through comic books and graphic novels from the 1930s to the present. To these figures the artist interposes others from cinema, literature and ancient mythology, creating visual codes with which he subverts, transforms and questions qualities and characteristics usually associated with male and (super)heroic figures. Using figures that belong to imaginary worlds, Tranquilli speaks of today’s reality and a state of deep crisis in which our cultural model finds itself.

“Adrian Tranquilli’s exhausted, annihilated and defeated superheroes,” says Daniele Pittèri, CEO of Musica per Roma, “not only overturn the Western conception of the saving figure of the hero, but also become a metaphor for the relationship between individuals, communities and power structures, as well as a symbol of the fragility of contemporary societies that almost two years of viruses have dramatically laid bare. In this sense, the decision to relaunch the exhibition spaces of the Auditorium, renaming them, with Tranquilli’s exhibition is emblematic of the conception that Musica per Roma has and wants to spread art as an ordering and at the same time unhinging element of the contemporary world.”

The exhibition is accompanied by the monograph Adrian Tranquilli published by Maretti Editore with contributions by Sergio Brancato, Raffaella Frascarelli, Antonello Tolve, and Eugenio Viola.

For info: www.auditorium.com

Hours: Monday through Friday from 2:30 to 8:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. On Dec. 8, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and Jan. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Dec. 24 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Dec. 25 from 3 to 9 p.m.; Dec. 31 from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Jan. 1 from 2:30 to 8:30 p.m. Closed on Tuesdays (except Dec. 28 and Jan. 4). The ticket office closes one hour earlier.

Guided tours are scheduled every Saturday at 12 noon and 3 p.m.; Dec. 26 to Jan. 6 daily at 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. Guided tours will be suspended on Saturday, Dec. 25 and Saturday, Jan. 1.

Tickets: Full 10 euros, reduced 8 euros for over 65 and under 30.

Image: Adrian Tranquilli, After The West, detail (2014; mixed media)

Rome, anthology featuring Adrian Tranquilli's defeated superheroes at Auditorium Garage

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