This is Pietro Ruffo's third exhibition at Galleria Lorcan O'Neill Roma. These new framed works use paper and cartographic maps which Ruffo cuts, paints, assembles, and configures into complex images that refer directly to the political ideals expressed by the protesters during the recent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.

Using flags and maps of six different countries, Pietro Ruffo's drawings, watercolours, and paintings trace the cultural and economic influence of some of the world’s most powerful states.

"Breve Storia Del Resto Del Mondo" is an anthology of works focussing on the main social themes, a journey through the universal principles of tolerance and democracy, the idea of progress of a civilization, the forms of colonisation, the processes of cultural, social and religious emancipation that give rise to ancient and unsolved conflicts between populations. Historical and political consciousness, anthropological analysis, critique of philosophical thought, pschology of contemporary society, but also study of landscape, art-making practice linked to project design and to the typical attitude of a researcher, Pietro Ruffo, committed to a lonely and poetic reconstruction of the history (of the rest) of the world.

 

In this solo show, curated by Ludovico Pratesi, Ruffo presents a group of six large flags: Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hamas, whose territory is fraught with political and religious conflicts.