“I find it extraordinary that a place dedicated to hospitality welcomes contemporary art within it. I like to think of Mimmo Jodice’s photographs displayed inside the Palace as a gift offered to the city of Rome. It is also a tribute to the great Neapolitan master who recently turned 90 and who with his gaze teaches us to look with new eyes even at what we think we know”, he begins Benedetta Spalletti – director of Vistamare Gallery who takes care of the exhibition project – telling The sky is almost entirely blue which presents in the frame of Velabro Palacethe mixed-use hotel housed in an 18th century building and inaugurated last spring, the shots of Mimmo Jodice (Naples, 1934) among the masters of photography of the 20th century.
Mimmo Jodice at Palazzo Velabro. The exhibition in Rome
It is visible until the end of September Mimmo Jodice’s photographic homage to the Mediterranean in the exhibition The sky is almost entirely bluewhich explores the cultural roots of the sea between Europe, North Africa and Western Asia, reflecting on the themes of memory, origins and the constant presence of the past in the present: “in this Mediterranean of mine I find the eternity of places, images of architecture, landscapes full of flashes, mysterious cavities, fragments of bodies and faces that have seen and tell us about distant events”, says Jodice. Since 1985, in fact, the famous photographer has made his camera his own a meditative time machine, capturing landscapes of ancient ruins, the statuary faces of classical sculpture and the traces of extinct civilizations, reworking, interpreting and rewriting their history. “The people of two thousand years ago had our same desires, our violence, our need for love. Of course the costumes were different, but in the image that you tear from a remote world you must find the absolute“, continues.
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Palazzo Velabro in Rome. Between archeology and contemporary art
As if suspended in time Palazzo Velabro is a crossroads of history and contemporaneitythat looking at theArch of Janus in via del Velabro it is housed in a building from the first half of the 18th century, then transformed in the 1960s by the rationalist architect Luigi Moretti (many of its signs can still be seen inside) and today managed by the LHM company, led by Cristina Paini who is also an avid collector. The extraordinary nature of the building is that in addition to the 27 large design suites also equipped with kitchens and 6 rooms, it also houses a library, a cinema and the Apicio 16 restaurant (hence mixed-use hotel), thanks to the valorisation intervention of the Milanese studio Garibaldi Architects: the main characteristics of the building’s history are all visible, from the eighteenth-century structure preserved in the facades, to the signs of Moretti’s passage between wood, marble and raw earth.
Palazzo Velabro in Rome. Between exhibition space, library, cinema and even restaurant
The mixed-use hotel offers visitors a free consultation library, whose selection dedicated to Rome is curated by Maria Vittoria Baravelli, which also follows the collection (located throughout the building) of photographs by historicized authors including Gabriele Basilico, Aurelio Amendola, Piero Gemelli up to those of the Roman world of the second half of the 20th century taken by Marisa Rastellini. While there are works of art to welcome guests in the hall Ettore Spalletti And Joseph Kosuth. Then a small cinema, called precisely, is added small cinema Velabro, with a room that can also be reserved for private screenings (complete with ticket and popcorn). And it doesn’t end there, on the first floor there is a square terrace that overlooks a garden and overlooks the Palatine and the Apicio 16 restaurant which revisits traditional Roman dishes in a modern key and hosts small musical events.
Palazzo Velabro in Rome. The word to Cristina Paini, CEO and Founder of LHM
“At the same time, the objective is to restore a new cultural welcoming space in the heart of a city where the contemporary mixes with the ancient, rationalism meets the hypermodern, contemporary art dialogues with historical photographs”, underlines Cristina Paini. A mixed-use hotel that wants to be dedicated to art in all its dimensions (from figurative art to literature to cinema), not only in form, but above all in concrete, through artistic projects which, in addition to valorising the great Italian masters such as Jodice, Basilico and Spalletti, also give space and voice to young talents such as Edoardo Piermattei”. Meanwhile, Paini is so convinced of this hospitality formula based on culture that she wants to replicate the project again in Rome, Venice or Milan.
Caterina Angelucci
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