Mirabilia Urbis Romae

CHRISTOPHER PELLEY / NEW WORKS
PALAZZO DELFINI, ROMA

Rome = tourists.  And long before Frommer's or the Guide Blue, there was the Mirabilia Urbis Romae - the Marvels of the City of Rome.  First penned in the 1140's, it  remained an immensely popular guide book well into the 15th century.  With a writing style "unhampered by any accurate knowledge of the historical continuity of the city", it  instead relied on myth, gossip and legend and a considerable amount of inventive fantasy in the description of the monuments of Rome.

I have taken the Mirabilia as a starting point for this exhibition and like some 18th century traveler on the Grand Tour, I have been exploring the monumental, the existential and the ordinary in this Place.  The large scale drawings, collages and installations of the exhibition express a piranesian sense of a past and a present that never was, assembled from fragments slightly out of context..  The post-modern tendency to be referential and ironic is balanced by my sense of observation and (subtle) humor.  And here, as in the Mirabilia Urbis Romea, the works are less of a descriptive cataloging of the marvels and more of an emotional response to this, the Eternal Jumble.

Christopher Pelley  installation view  MIRABILIA URBIS ROMAE

Christopher Pelley  installation view  MIRABILIA URBIS ROMAE

Christopher Pelley  installation view  MIRABILIA URBIS ROMAE

Christopher Pelley  installation view  MIRABILIA URBIS ROMAE

this exhibition was installed at Palazzo Delfini in Roma in April, 2012

Mater Christi

Upon entering the lobby of the parochial grade school that I attended, one was accosted by a large nondescript wall, the middle section of which was paneled with wood strips stained a dark brown in keeping with the taste of the mid sixties.  One spring morning at assembly we were told that a sculpture of the Virgin Mary, the namesake of our school, was being carve in Italy for that blank wall.  An italian sculpture being shipped to Burlington Vermont!  My fertile fifth grade mind went into overdrive.  Would it be like an early Michelangelo, sad and refined with maybe an arm or a foot left unfinished while the rest of the gleaming white carrara marble was polished to perfection, evidence that the sculpture was abruptly taken away from the carver to be transported to our school?  Or maybe it would be Berniniesque with piles of torrid drapery and undulating rapturous folds.  I secretly drew pictures imagining possible permutations. 


The fateful day arrived.  Something stood against that naked wall beneath a sheet, pregnant with expectation.  We were all ushered from our classrooms and silently (for grade schoolers) filed into the lobby to face the sheet.  With prayers and a great flourish, the sheet was yanked away from the wall and with it my heart collapsed as it deflated to the floor.  There, attached to the wall was a wood  carving somewhat painted.  Not so much polychromed so as to have that syrupy verisimilitude of the saints and martyrs gazing down upon me at church, but rather like some paint was applied, then wiped off.  More like a stain.  The much anticipated drapery hung stiffly in lines that I guess were meant to describe folds.  Disappointment reigned supreme in my heart that day, and not the Queen of Heaven.


I had long forgotten this episode, until the other day when I was walking down via dei Cestari, here in Roma, and in a store window for  arte sacra, there she was.  Mater Christi.

Large Scale

Monuments are, well, monumental.  Big.  Sense of scale is everything. As a New Yorker, one would think I am immune to the presence of the large, but counter-intuitively here in Roma I am in a state of perpetual awe.  And my work has responded accordingly to my adopted environment.  Recently in the studio I have been working on a series of large scale drawings which relate to this Eternal jumble of a City, which I then place in the urban environment.  I like the in context / out of context tension that develops.  (and of course I like to watch how people interact with them too)

Christopher Pelley  Large Gesture #1

Christopher Pelley  Large Gesture #1

Christopher Pelley  Large Gesture #1

Christopher Pelley  Large Gesture #1

This drawing (charcoal on paper, 230cm x 144cm) was temporarily installed on a sunny day at the end of March 2012, in Piazza Lovatelli, Roma