Carlo D'Orta
Architectural Abstractions

05__21.09.2025

Sala fontana, admission free

 

Curated by Fabio Mongelli

 

Exhibition promoted by Rome the Capital City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and by the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo

Carlo D'Orta Architectural Abstractions9/5/2025__21 September 2025
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Carlo D'Orta, Vibrazioni NYC #7, fotografia d'arte, 2018

«If you wish to teach the human eye to see in a new way, you have to show it everyday familiar objects with totally unexpected perspectives, in unexpected situations and from unexpected angles.»
Alexander Rodchenko

  

Carlo D’Orta (born in Florence in 1955) uses the camera to tap reality for artistic images that often remain hidden from our gaze. His subject of choice is architecture, and his photographer’s art consists in searching for geometrical abstraction through superimposition, interwoven architectural structures and details in perspective. This search is the focus of his series entitled Biocities, Still-Life Geometries, Vibrations and Surreal Landscapes on display in Palazzo Esposizioni Roma’s Sala Fontana.

Biocities and Still-Life Geometries draw their inspiration from the abstract art of Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Mark Rothko and Peter Halley, from the photography of Franco Fontana and Lucien Hervé an, occasionally, even from the metaphysical visions of Giorgio de Chirico. Vibrations and Surreal Landscapes, on the other hand, involve a search for images of informal or surrealist abstraction. Here the artist’s lens focuses on glass walls and metal plates that reflect and distort the architecture around them to generate unpredictable patterns made of shapes, lights and colours, seeking its deeper inspiration also from the Futurism of Balla, Boccioni, Carrà and Severini and, above all, from the visionary teachings of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudì.

Large-format works by Carlo D’Orta are on display in such major institutions as the Bank of Italy’s Conference Centre in Rome, the headquarters of the Bar Association in Milan’s central law court, the Chamber of Deputies, the Communications Ombudsman’s office, the Central State Archive Museum, the EUR S.p.A. and LUISS University in Rome, the Italian Consulate General in New York, the Italian Cultural Institutes in New York and Munich, the Order of Architects’ headquarters in Stuttgart, the Regional Council in Campania and numerous private collections both in Italy and abroad.