ANTONIO ROVALDI

Parma, 1975



 

 

Opening 15 November 2025 at 12:00 noon
15 November 2025 - 15 January 2026
Tuesday - Saturday 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm
GMR, Giudecca 800 Q, Venice

The Michela Rizzo Gallery is pleased to present Boulder, the group exhibition that will conclude the exhibition series at the former brewery site. The exhibition, which will open on Saturday 15 November 2025 at 12:00, will feature a dialogue between the work of Hamish Fulton and that of Matthew Attard, Ivan Barlafante, Michael Höpfner, Francesco Jodice, Ryts Monet, Maurizio Pellegrin, Cesare Pietroiusti, David Rickard, Antonio Rovaldi, Mariateresa Sartori, Claudio Tesser and Silvano Tessarollo.

Boulders is inspired by the work Boulder by Hamish Fulton, a British artist who has made walking an artistic language and an act of awareness. Based on direct experience of the landscape and a radical conception of the relationship between art and nature, Fulton's work becomes the starting point for a choral and intergenerational dialogue around the symbol of the boulder, an emblem of strength, permanence and memory of the landscape.

Within this horizon, the artists in the exhibition are arranged according to their varying degrees of proximity to Fulton's thinking. Michael Höpfner and Antonio Rovaldi share his experiential and meditative approach more directly: both investigate walking as a means of knowledge and immersion in the landscape, restoring its physical and inner dimensions through drawings, photographs and installations.

More lateral but deeply akin in poetic tension are Mariateresa Sartori, Matthew Attard and Ivan Barlafante, who translate their relationship with nature into languages of perception and thought. Sartori presents a large installation created using the frottage technique, dedicated to the materials of stones and sand, accompanied by a book that intertwines artistic vision and scientific observation. Attard, through drawing and the use of a pen plotter, transforms three-dimensional scans of boulders into graphic tracings that blend digital precision and manual intervention, exploring the limits of perception and image.

Around these nuclei are gathered artists who, while starting from different languages and perspectives, broaden the reflection on the link between man, nature and space. David Rickard explores the material and perceptual relationships between architecture and the environment; Ryts Monet, Maurizio Pellegrin, Cesare Pietroiusti and Francesco Jodice offer conceptual and narrative visions that open up the theme of landscape to new cultural and social geographies. In particular, Jodice presents a large-scale work from the WEST project, a journey through cities born during the gold rush and now abandoned, in which the landscape becomes an archive of utopias and failures.

Silvano Tessarollo and Claudio Tesser present works in which nature reveals itself in its fragile concreteness, between memory, time and transformation. The exhibition will centre on two wall paintings by Hamish Fulton, Glacial Boulder and Revisiting The Boulders, which will occupy a significant part of the space, giving shape and breath to the entire project.

With Boulder, the Michela Rizzo Gallery concludes an important season of its journey on the Giudecca, entrusting the image of the boulder – solid and immobile but at the same time shaped by time – with the task of preserving the memory of a shared place and time. A landing place that is also a threshold: the last step before a new direction.

Antonio Rovaldi (Parma, 1975) lives and works between Milan and New York. He studied art and photography in Milan under Hideyoshi Nagasawa and Mario Cresci. His research revolves around themes related to the landscape and the perception of space beyond distance. His artistic practice is rooted in walking and long-distance cycling, and his exploration of places is often intertwined with literature. The use of writing in connection with the image is a constant feature of his poetics. Antonio Rovaldi's work focuses primarily on photography, video, sculpture, and drawing.

Rovaldi has won numerous awards, including the New York Prize at Columbia University (2006); an artist residency at the ISCP in Brooklyn (2009); and the Otella Prize, GAM (2017). Furthermore, he won the fifth edition of the Italian Council (2019) with the project End. Words from the Margins, New York City, promoted by GAMeC in collaboration with Harvard University (Graduate School of Design) and the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. In 2017, he co-founded CLER in Milan, which serves as both a studio and an exhibition space for artists working primarily with photography, film, sound, and video installations.

He has also had the opportunity to exhibit widely: in 2016, at the Galleria Michela Rizzo alongside Michael Hoepfner for the exhibition Dear Michael, from the Edgecombe to Qumalai; the solo exhibition So many things in the air! (2020) at GAMeC; the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (2020); GSD Harvard Graduate School of Design (2019); The Goma, Madrid; the Italian Cultural Institute in Lisbon; Museo MAN in Nuoro; Galleria Monitor, Rome; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; Magazzino 1b, Prato; The Italian Academy at Columbia University; and the Museum of Contemporary Design, Ravenna. Among his recent collective exhibitions are: Give me Yesterday, Fondazione Prada (2016); and La Via Emilia. Strade, viaggi, confine / Nuove Esplorazioni, European Photography, Reggio Emilia (2016).

Antonio Rovaldi has also published several books: The Sound of the Woodpecker Bill: New York City (2019, Humboldt Books), which accounts for the artist's walk around the five boroughs of New York during the summer of 2016 to describe the city's fringes; New York City Babe (2017, Lupo&Burtscher, Les Cerises, Paris), a children's book inspired by New York and a guide to everything there is to see in the city, ultimately serving as a publication dedicated to both New York itself and to photography; Orizzonti in Italia (2015, Humboldt Books and MAN), the result of a long journey around the Italian peninsula—and Sardinia in particular—to photograph horizons; Detour in Detroit (2015, Humboldt Books), written by Francesca Berardi and illustrated by Rovaldi himself, which tells the story of one of the most fascinating cities of the 21st century through a series of encounters with its residents; Shorakkapoch (2010), a project by Antonio Rovaldi and Michael Hoepfner; and the monograph Marcamenti (2005, Essegi Edizioni).