Fondente Arte presents and curates, at La Fonderia Art Gallery, la mostra del tempo, della materia, del ritorno (the exhibition of time, matter, and return), a solo exhibition by Rossana Maggi, a Brianza-born artist and winner of the fourth edition of Fondente’s Whatsart competition for emerging artists.
The exhibition centers on the concept of time as an eternal and profound dimension of a constantly recurring moment. As in Nietzsche’s philosophy, time is not merely duration; instead, it acquires a cyclical value—an eternal return from an imperishable past toward an equally infinite future. In this sense, Rossana Maggi’s works come to life from a constant cycle of experimentation, where the absolute protagonist is matter itself, with its continuous transformation and slow unveiling, thereby finding a definitive dimension, shaped by its perfect imperfection and its essence of being exactly what it is.
Time—whether it refers to the days spent completing a piece or the period lived during lockdown—becomes a metric for the artist upon which to base her very work: twenty-eight mackerel tins for the artwork Come la ruggine (Like rust), matching the number of days in February required to create it; seventy cubes of soap for Il rito di ogni giorno (The everyday ritual), reflecting the number of days of total lockdown in Italy during the pandemic. For Rossana Maggi, time thus becomes a bearer of matter, a new element with which to experiment, delve deep, and return, within a cycle of continuous change. The artist’s creative process itself is rooted in the transformation of different materials, and their manipulation and combination to create something else—unique and never identical to itself, a blend of time and matter. It is from this process that the creation of works comes to life, serving as metaphors for stories, ideas, and concepts: rust represents the soul of the slothful who allows themselves to be corroded; ash signifies the death of workers during the construction of the World Cup stadiums in Qatar; burnt wood is elapsed time which, inexorably, returns.
Rossana Maggi is one of the talents selected by Fondente Arte, which since 2021 has been supporting emerging artists and businesses in a shared journey of value creation through contemporary art. Art is born to unite and communicate, and Fondente Arte is its full expression.