“Quando il cielo finisce” (When the sky ends) is Andrea Mastrovito's second solo exhibition at Michela Rizzo Gallery, the first in the spacious rooms of Palazzo Palumbo Fossati in Venice. For the occasion, the artist has created three series of new works: 7 large panels carved, inlaid, and then drawn with colored pencils (a type of work he began a few months earlier with the permanent installation at Casa Marina Lerma in Bergamo, a natural continuation of the “graphite on wooden panel” series exhibited by Wilde Gallery in Geneva in 2024); four medium-sized frottages and eight engraved blackboards.
Crowning it all is the large installation that gives the exhibition its title, Quando il cielo finisce (When the Sky Ends), which consists of 80 artist's books opened and arranged on the ground to form a large, stormy sea on which a butterfly rests, uncertain.
All the works are actually conversations with the historical artists of the Rizzo gallery - from Fabio Mauri to Lawrence Carroll, from Nanni Balestrini to Roman Opalka... - which Mastrovito evokes in the backgrounds of each individual work.