An antithesis to the usual and numerous exhibitions determined by “container” titles, the group show presented by Galleria Raffaella Cortese wants just to invite the public to pay attention to the works offering time and space to a pure contemplation of them.

Four large scale works, four international artists, no particular link between them nor a common issue, simply the observers’ silence in front of the powerful subject exhibited.

Kcho (Cuba, 1970), Columna Infinita IV revises and interprets Brancusi’s issue: the “soft” steel blocks are translated by Kcho into a pile of cumbersome inner tubes retained by ropes. These black rings are no longer able to reach the sky since they are imprisoned by the roof. The artist uses poor and provisional materials that correspond to the unbalanced feeling and to the utopian idea of freedom.

Juliao Sarmento (Lisbon, 1948), Dentro is a figure of a woman without a head, without a face, standing on a wooden platform wearing a simple black dress. It’s a recurrent presence in the Portuguese artist’s production. The artist pays attention on the archetypal image of a woman propagated by western culture in its media which results in a disembodied and abstract image.

Kiki Smith (Nuremberg, 1954), born in Germany but based in New York, best known as artist of the fairy tales, shows Southern Hemisphere Constellation, a large scale work that well represents the artist’s passion for natural and celestial elements.

Jana Sterbak (Praga, 1955), through Bread bed offers us an important encounter with her main artistic issues: the daily and domestic object and its organic and perishable properties. The bed, one of the most important “object-place” where many of our daily activities take place, is realized with a steel base and a mattress  made from bread, the most famous food per excellence.