Digital printing is the latest arrival in the centuries-old history of printing, and allows us to reconsider the production of printed images in the field of the arts, finding unprecedented relationships between tradition and modernity. The Digital Printing workshop, held by Prof. Roberto Pace, in the period 2010/2022 operated through lessons structured as educational events that increase personal sensitivity. In the past, the techniques that allowed images to be reproduced required long maturation times before they could be used for expressive purposes. Today, for an image to be used in a visionary sense, it is sufficient to remove new technologies from commercial use. In the classroom, technology was compared with contemporary works of art, in order to rethink its standard use. We have embraced the characteristics of Italian visual culture, determined by a unique condition of continuity with the past, which the term “Renaissance” has established as the ability to think of the new not in opposition to the old and to recognise the heart of tradition in the infinite possibility of renewal. Digital printing is a point of encounter and exchange between manual and digital, between abstraction and photography. The surface printed with new technologies was explored in practice in the workshop through the conceptualisation of techniques and the use of artists as personal avatars, which enhance the individual skills of each student.
The exhibition is not chronological, but rather characterised by a lively approach to staging that will renew its original motivations; it aims not only to document, but to reactivate the paths previously developed, finding new meanings. The exhibition will visually juxtapose the small-format ink-jet prints from the three-year course with the 300×400 cm posters from the two-year course; the technical experiments that rethink drawing through the different options provided by digital technology in their fusion with historical materials and techniques; it will show photos and printed materials from the three exhibitions developed in the workshop that rethought academic teaching; it will collect samples of the most original theses, renderings and montages in Classroom 1, virtual forays into the Gagosian gallery, installations created at the Maam, the Warhol+Albers self-portraits; New Vision exams; the projects for the President’s Fan won in recent years by three students on the course.
A catalogue published by “Gli Ori” will subsequently collect the results of the exhibition, enriched with images selected from the course archive, expanding the theoretical reflection both in the texts and in the graphic layout, which will change according to the interweaving of the visual material.
Opening:
6 March 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. / 3:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
OPENING HOURS:
Monday to Friday, 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.;
Saturdays 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon (by appointment).
Lecturer Roberto Pace will be available throughout the duration of the exhibition.
During the exhibition, visitors will be able to attend the course lectures that will be held on 8 and 15 March in the Colleoni Hall, from 9 am to 4 pm.
Communication Office of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome
Coordination: Prof. Guglielmo Gigliotti, g.gigliotti@abaroma.it
Collaboration: Marianna Pontillo, Chiara Picco, Martina Macchia, comunicazione@abaroma.it