12 February – 30 April 2026
«I would love to launch one of my sculptures into orbit, into space. It would be a wonderful dream to know that one of my spatial forms is floating up there» – Eliseo Mattiacci, 2006.
Studio Casoli presents an exhibition dedicated to Eliseo Mattiacci and his strong relationship with space and astronomy. A leading figure on the Roman art scene since the early 1960s, he distinguished himself for his conceptual and performative experiments in sculptural works. Initially attracted to industrial and urban materials, he was an occasional exponent of the Arte Povera movement. From the 1980s onwards, he devoted himself mainly to working with metals, which he defined as “living” materials, shaping them with inspiration from the cosmos and the stars, exploring the potential of visible and invisible physical energies and fuelling an ideal tension aimed at removing weight from matter.
The exhibition, entitled Camera Spaziale, presents for the first time the sculpture Meteoriti, created between 1985 and 1988 and part of the trilogy Meteoriti Pianeti Filosofi. The artist conceived the work by imagining meteorites coming from a journey through outer space, raining down from the sky and striking the walls of a domestic environment. The gallery space is thus transformed into a “space chamber” where visitors are encouraged to reflect on the relationship between space and time, earth and cosmos. The installation interacts with other representative sculptures from the same period, Pianeta (1985) and three spirals from the Riflesso del cielo (1989), which are aluminium casts made from negative imprints that the artist drew on sand. This processuality, that involves primal rituals and archaic connections with the earth and nature in the creation of form, is strongly characteristic of Mattiacci’s work, connecting his early performative works to the subsequent consolidation of his sculptural practice.
«His imagination is linked to an ever-futuristic and mechanical overcoming, but less terrestrial and more planetary. From the outset, he has been interested not in sculptural constructions anchored to the ground, but in surfaces and objects seen from afar: from the Moon. [The assembled or constructed object] becomes an autonomous star, without base or weight, rotating in the cosmos of languages» – Germano Celant, 2013.
Eliseo Mattiacci (Cagli, 1940 – Fossombrone, 2019) moved to Rome in the mid 1960s and made his debut in 1967 with his first solo exhibition at La Tartaruga gallery. In the same year, he participated in the seminal exhibition Arte Povera e Im-Spazio curated by Germano Celant at La Bertesca in Genoa. He then appeared at L’Attico gallery with his famous performance, which involved his entrance sitting on a compressor that crushed a path of pozzolan earth.
In 1972, a room was dedicated to his work at the Venice International Art Biennale. At the 1988 Biennale, several of his large-scale works inspired by cosmic and astronomical themes were exhibited.
Prada Milano Arte – which took the name Fondazione Prada in 1995 – inaugurated with a solo exhibition of his work in 1993.
In 2013, Germano Celant edited his monograph Eliseo Mattiacci, published by Skira.
The MART dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him in 2016, followed in 2018 by the most comprehensive anthological exhibition ever held on his work, staged at the Forte di Belvedere in Florence.
In 2022, Ridinghouse, London, published the book Sculpture in Action. Eliseo Mattiacci in Rome, curated by Lara Conte in dialogue with Studio Eliseo Mattiacci produced with the support of the Italian Council.
The exhibition is in collaboration with Studio Eliseo Mattiacci