Elio Ticca – Vacanze Romane

Chapel of Grand Hospice, Brussels – April 2024

 

Referencing Roman archaeology and architecture, from mosaics to temples and public baths, Ticca’s series blends Grand Tour reveries and homoerotic subjects, landscape painting and sculptural nudity, shuffling all at once sport scenes and Graeco-Roman mythology, the underground of Brussels and historical artifacts. 

 

Ticca’s evocative, nostalgic and dazzling works are embedded within the space, creating an ideal bridge between the past and the now, a lost Arcadia and mundane contemporary materialism. Inscribed in the frame of the chapel, his work pursues the search of an elsewhere that can be found here, now, and every day, playing with the fetishization of the past and popular culture, the full Southern sunshine, and the chiaroscuro of North Europe. Eventually, a tongue-in-cheek irony meets with a contemplative amazement, drifting far in holiday memories.