Carla Tolomeo: Manual de Zoología Fantástica, Viareggio

Contini Art Gallery and Viareggio renew their artistic partnership: the Lorenzo Viani Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art will feature Carla Tolomeo’s colorful and whimsical artworks from March 12th to June 12th, 2022; the show will create an ensemble that will make us travel in a parallel world, made of fantasy and cosmogony. The exhibition is sponsored by the City of Viareggio, and the Department of Culture; Contini Art Gallery of Venice and Cortina organized the solo show featuring the artist that the gallery has been representing nationally and internationally. Carla Tolomeo discovered Jorge Luis Borges through the passionate reading of his books, from "The Gold of the Tigers” to the "Manual of Fantastic Zoology", which became a sort of breviary for her. “I was conducting research about bestiaries, as I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between human kind and the animal kingdom. I was investigating the fantastic world established through this connection, the magic that animals suggested, the myth that they created, the circularity of thought, because all the most ancient texts feature singular, sometimes parallel conceptions about the origin of the world through animals." Hence the exhibition’s title and theme: "Manual de Zoología Fantástica" (Manual of Fantastic Zoology), which brings to light the artist’s research on how animals have become the bridge between earth and sky, and how the legends and allegories they contain have led human beings to question themselves about the origin the whole of world. Carla Tolomeo's world is an eclectic and cultured imagination, of creations suspended in a fascinating territory poised between art and design, using literary echoes of books full of visions.