London: Collezione Maramotti, Moretti Fine Art and an opportunity named Atelier dell’Errore

 

Luca Santiago Mora is a slim man in his forties, or fifties. We met him a few months ago in Reggio Emilia, at the Collezione Maramotti, which is hosting and supporting him and his… pupils? Behind a pair of glasses that would better suit a fussy accountant, or a nostalgic East Berliner, he has the intense eyes of a creative individual who is keen to take you deep into what is certainly a main part of his life. Thirteen years ago, when this story started, he named it Atelier dell’errore, and now this successful meta-artistic project is going to be celebrated in London, at Moretti Fine Art, thanks to Collezione Maramotti, Max Mara and Moretti gallery itself. Here (4 Ryder St), from 4 October until 2 November, some of the most expressive outcomes of the The Error’s studio (no official English translation is available yet) will share the room with three main works of art by Italian masters such as Carlo Dolci, Andrea de Bartoli and Luca Signorelli; and as far as we know The Guardian Animals + other invisible beings will be the first exhibition connecting two problematic art categories such as old masters and outsider art.

 

Since 2002 Santiago Mora has been working with youngsters with disease in understanding, attention, concentration, or affected by the Down syndrome, or autism. He helps them to draw and paint in order to express through imagination their hidden, undervalued, or only misunderstood potentialities. The Atelier dell’errore is a no-profit laboratory of visual arts officially operating as complementary service to the Child Neuropsychiatric public clinics of Reggio Emilia and Bergamo. And when the children become adults, that is to say when they turn 18 according to the Italian law, the Atelier dell’errore is still there – relocated at the Collezione Maramotti’s headquarters – to help them if they want to keep on navigating the unlimited sea that we all call art. There are just few basic rules: 1) you are not allowed to erase; 2) you can’t destroy a work after it got started; 3) you must go ahead, whatever it takes, until the piece is finished. That is why, for instance, some of the animals that you will see at Moretti gallery have been drawn on more than one sheet of paper and will probably affect you deeply, as deeply as generally successful works of art do: every time you grasp the need behind an artistic expression, it makes the piece speaking directly to your emotional intelligence.

 

Otherwise, to put it in Luca’s words: “at the Atelier you draw mostly following your nerves and heart, but a hint of head and few rules are also applied. They are inevitable and crucial. They are the only compass for the kind of improvised navigation that we do, at the mercy of sudden and insurmountable fog banks, or intimidating icebergs, which are their own personal complications, which would be able to sink an entire fleet of arks loaded with good, even very good purposes”.

 

Clearly the now three chosen old masters – Luca Signorelli’s Saint Anthony Abbot joined the exhibition’s check list just a few days ago – play the role of ideal protectors of the animals (some of which curiously look like the primitive underwater species filmed by Werner Herzog in Antartica). Unfortunately Noah is not such a company, but Dolci’s gentle guardian angel and the handsome Archangel Michael painted by Andrea d Bartoli while subduing a demon who is clasping a sinful human being curled up in a scale pan may represent a message of hope, strength and courage addressing the fragility of the animals themselves.

 

On 6 October, at the Italian Cultural Institute of London, a meeting between Marco Belpoliti, Massimiliano Gioni and Arturo Galansino will present the Prophetic zoological atlas, which is the book that accompanies the exhibition (Corraini, 2016). It gathers together a selection of the animals drawn by the many talented members of the Atelier dell’errore during the last five years. Along with writings by some remarkable intellectuals and scholars such as Antonella Anedda and Luigi Zoja, the publication includes a second crucial part of the highly expressive outcomes of the project: the descriptions of the drawings given by their authors. Reading them with intellectual humility and well-balanced expectations will certainly help you to understand how close we become as soon as we accept to share our feelings in the art room, no matter whether it is for professional purposes or not.

September 30, 2016