Rubedo is the il title of the show celebrating and inaugurating the new director of Menhir Arte Contemporanea.  A group show with selected artworks realized by: Valerio Adami, Natale Addamiano, Massimo Angèi, Domenico Bianchi, Alberto Biasi, Alighiero Boetti, Piero Dorazio, Omar Galliani, Yayoi Kusama, Pino Pinelli, Michael Rögler, Salvo, Emilio Scanavino, Turi Simeti, Giuseppe Spagnulo, Giuliano Tomaino, Giuseppe Uncini, Gianfranco Zappettini.

Twenty six works whose common theme is the colour Red, interpreted by each artist in different shapes and ways, depending on their own sensitivity. A catalogue presented by Alberto Zanchetta will accompany the show. Rubedo is the colour of passion and destruction, of domestic hearth, of ardour and kingship: Red colour never leaves anyone emotionless: it makes people euphoric and restless. In fact Goethe associates Red to “ an impression of gravity and dignity but also of grace and mercy”.
To Massimo Angèi painting is a Lovable demon, which is a breeding-ground of tremors, tensions and fatigues. To the colour of luxury are also inspired Turi Simeti's wave-like shapes, come to an extreme synthesis and yet to their highest sensuality.

In Salvo's works wintery sunsets, pervaded by a faint, sensual pink, that leave pace to landscapes reinvigorated by summer heat. In a different way in the paintings by Natale Addamiano, skies burn into flames at sunset and the smallest spark could blaze this air-fluttering powder. And when the landscape is not burning what is aflame are Tomaino's houses, in the summer heath. Adami's Palays Royal also revives at sunset while his Snake Charmers are transformed into fire tamers. As a sort of fire-breaking barrier, Giuseppe Uncini's cement retains brightness with fierce obduracy; vice verse, Dorazio's Red is less emphasized, but at the same time it overwhelms all other colours and dissolves them until they are absorbed into it. Omar Galliani's images are rays of flaming energy, effigies of the most subtle and movable substance, which is fire: source of light and heat. The same “ardour in pectore” can be found in Pino Pinelli's and Giangranco's Zappettini's works, where colour is floating, similar to a  truncated vein. Clots that artists define as “warps and weaves” of “R[ed] Paintings” are born from this. Not much different from them are Alberto Biasi's Relieves, with those (razor) blades that seem to cut both sight and fleshes, causing an hematic flow.

In Domenico Bianchi's painting the colour's coils are not those of Red but of the Rubedo: the last phase of an alchemic process that leads to the opus. The igneous chromatic tonality is, instead, the background of the swarming Nigredo by Emilio Scanavino: a sort of gordian knot that wants to shape itself precisely.
While Prometheus stole fire to donate it to mankind, Giuseppe Spagnulo tries to bridle this red fires in his paperworks (before they get completely aflame).

The art of the “pois priestess” is also soaked with anxieties, distresses and fears: Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Nets infinitely enlarge themselves, managing to bring one's sight towards the unknown, in an absolute space, made of pure light. In the same way one may wonder if Michael Rögler's attempt was that of making a “consumed tabula” instead of a “tabula rasa”.

And finally come Alighiero Boetti's Clendars, where each year is marked in Red, that red which has always been bothering copybooks in school, a battlefield where we all were present at the slaughter of mistakes.
The exhibition was born after a project by Menhir Arte Contemporanea. The Gallery would like to thank Cantina 5 Terre for its precious help and all the artists, in particular: Addamiano, Angèi, Biasi, Galliani, Pinelli, Simeti, Zappetini e Tomaino, who will attend the vernissage.