Art News

Rome Hosts the Fourth ROMA Contemporary Art Fair in May

artwork: Claudia Rogge - "Ever After Purgatory IV", 2010 - Lambda (Diasec) - 160 x 210 cm. - Image courtesy of Galleria Paola Verrengia, © the artist On view at the Galleria Paola Verrengia stand at ROMA Contemporary Art Fair May 5th to 8th.


Rome.- The fourth edition of ROMA – The Road to Contemporary Art, will be held in the heart of the Roman spring from the 5th to the 8th May 2011. Last year the public participated in a great festival of contemporary art thanks also to the extraordinary exhibitions at the MAXXI and MACRO museums, the inauguration of new private foundations, and the participation of Academies and Foreign Cultural Institutes in the city. Rome is protagonist of a Contemporary Renaissance and increasingly at the center of international attention and the focus of an extraordinary cultural and artistic ferment, a movement that involves institutions, galleries and a continuously growing number of sophisticated and informed private collectors.

The next edition of ROMA will be hosted again at the MACRO Testaccio, the venue that attracted more than 50,000 visitors to view the artworks displayed in its 8,000 square meters of floorspace in 2010. The recently restored former slaughterhouse that still preserves the structures of its original use provides a dramatic backdrop and singular display space that will welcome exhibitors and the public until late at night making the Fair a unique meeting place between art and the jet set.

ROMA will feature about 76 galleries from around the world, selected or invited by a professional team of artistic advisors, providing visitors with the unique opportunity to see and buy artworks by some of the word’s leading or emerging artists of the International artistic scene. Art galleries and museums throughout the city will be also be participating, with special exhibitions and events featuring many of the biggest names in contemporary art. ROMA 2011 is divided into 3 main area, the ‘Fair’ conatining a selection of international modern and contemporary art galleries, the ‘Start Up’ space reserved for emerging galleries selected by an international team of curators and ‘Out of Range’ an open air exhibition area devoted to large scale works which will be selected from galleries participating in this section by a committee of international curators.

artwork: Ernesto Neto - "While Nothing Happens", 2008 - Installation commissioned for the MACRO Museum in Rome - © the artist. On view at ROMA Art Fair.

The Roma Contemporary Association has been established to support, socialize and back up ROMA The Road to Contemporary Art, a project which is different from any other similar fair event in Italy and the world over, certainly a more articulated way to deal with contemporary within the contemporary era. The Association is open to the support from representatives from the world of collecting, entrepreneurship and culture who share the project and are willing to take an active role in its promotion. Roma Contemporary shall also support those who are already promoting collectorship in Rome, to those who devise and produce activities of discussion, dialogue and sociality connected to the contemporary through workshops and/or educational events and initiatives. This will be done directly and in cooperation with other institutional and associative realities, as it has already occurred at Julian Schnabel’s exhibition in Palazzo Venezia and at the Rotonda della Besana in Milan. The Association intends to play an active role in the system the fair is about to represent and promote as related to contemporary arts, be it linked to the city and to the territory or to international realities, such as the foreign Culture Institutes in Rome. Visit the art fair’s website athttp://www.romacontemporary.it