'Megalomanie', between irony and fiction the CANEMORTO exhibition in Rome
The exhibition curated by Davide Pellicciari and Carlotta Spinelli is at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, until 18 July
2' min read
2' min read
"In a society that only celebrates success, artists remind us how important it is to accept the error, the fracture, the unexpected". These are the words of curator Carlotta Spinelli interviewed by Frank Petravich in the article The Poetics of Failure, contained in 'Il Quotidiano dell'arte', issue 461, May 2025. The publication ironically emulates the typography, layout and news distribution of a newspaper dedicated to art. CANEMORTO, a trio of anonymous artists who have been active since 2007, is, in fact, part of the art system and analyses its communication, promotion mechanisms and the market itself.
Street Origins
The strength that comes from the trio's street origins is precisely that of being able to infiltrate the institutional meshwork while maintaining independent traits. The trio wears guerrilla masks, speaks an unidentified language and worships a canine deity called Txakurra, which allows the three members to paint with 6 hands in a sort of overlapping identity.
The Canemorto thus overturns expectations, manipulates the language and corollaries of the system from within, trying to step into the shoes of the insiders among curators, journalists, critics and dealers.
Megalomanie, at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio's project room, presents burnt sheets, twisted and crumpled aluminium plates 'as big as doors' that occupy the central oval, ten micro prints found in the centre of the room in a tiny crater that can only be read through the lens of microscopes.
Accompanying the exhibition, a medium-length film starring CANEMORTO shows the process that gave rise to the exhibition - the idea of creating the world's largest prints, entering the Guinness Book of Records, turning around one's financial situation - and concludes with a mystery... what triggered the explosion at the Foundation and where did the three members of the collective end up?
