Secondome Presents Divina Sproporzione

Rome based design gallery, Secondome, presents “DIVINA SPROPORZIONE” (“Divine Disproportion”), a group exhibition curated by Valentina Guidi Ottobri.

The definition of “Beauty” has, throughout time, remained an obsession for artists and philosophers, who through their masterpieces, deeply influence the trends of contemporary society. In past centuries “Ugliness” was considered as the opposite of “Beauty”. But ugliness as defined by Rosenkrantz in his 1853 “Aesthetics of Ugliness”, is not only the “hell of beauty”, it actually has its own history.

“The modernity of Rosenkranz’s work is not only in his farsighted study of the “ugly” aspects of art – which abundantly characterise our time – but also in his questioning the very purpose of aesthetics: after him, aesthetics and beauty don’t necessarily coincide. Aesthetics in themselves do not constitute the theory of beauty, and an unsettling interpretation unravels on the deceptive and multi-shaped aspects of reality,” (Karl Rosenkranz, “Aesthetic of Ugliness” curated by Sandro Barbera, intro by Elio Franzini).

Divina Sproporzione is a dreamlike journey where the perception of a lack -or- variation in harmony, expose the betrayal of appearance. An allegorical excursus on contemporary design, whose main objective remains that of re-encoding the more recently exacerbated and defaced classical canons of aesthetics, with a view to reinstating contents at the forefront.

Through the works of 9 artists (Analogia Project, Ilaria Bianchi, Matteo Cibic, Maurizio Galante, Tal Lancman, Mirko Cannizzaro, Fabiano Lioi, Paolo Polloniato, Elena Salmistraro, and Gio Tirotto) and a readapting of the classical canons of aesthetic beauty, the show endeavours to present a varied vision of ‘ugly’ and ‘beautiful’. The result is an invitation to rise above ready-made definitions, and to search for the essence beyond the form.

DIVINA SPROPORZIONE runs from October 13th to November 27th at Secondome, via Giovanni da Castel Bolognese 81, Rome.