Besides the immense blue bouquet made of paint pots that we will return to, the first work of this exhibition, unlike any other, but at the Depardieu gallery it’s customary not to say traditional, that the visitor notices is: Piccolo equatore, or the small equator.
Indeed, here the artist goes against the trompe l’œil with this three-dimensional canvas that yet seems like an optical illusion. Claudio Rotta Loria explains the purpose of his work: “ambiguity, illusion, what one sees is not necessarily what is, it all depends on where you stand.”
It’s a border, a boundary and the Italian word is more expressive than the French term, between the real and the spiritual. Claudio applies this metaphysics to geography by blending shapes, space, and colors. At the beginning of our article, we mentioned an immense bouquet: The movement of the sea, its dance worthy of Ravel’s Boléro with this eternal return, this perpetual back and forth that overwhelms us. The equator is the main theme of this exhibition. It is both the center and the boundary between two hemispheres, between two skies where the stars differ.
Claudio Rotta Loria’s equator has a metaphysical dimension: the sky, the climate, space, and time change. The artist allows us to cross this Meta-geographical boundary. Thanks to him, we will discover the other side, the hidden one, not of a mirror, but of his equator.
Africa is the second theme of the exhibition, it is also a metaphysical Africa, it is not about safaris for jaded kids in search of emotions, but about another Africa and to understand it, you need to see the exhibition. Claudio Rotta Loria reconciles straight lines and arcs. He becomes a master surveyor, but his measure is different.
With him, time, distance, places, and space no longer have the same meaning. Everything comes together, assembles like in a play with the rule of the three unities. Claudio abolishes distance and time, a metaphysics, pardon: a meta-geography.
Thierry Jan
