Il difficile è dimenticare ciò che si è visto per casa (ritratto di Pescara per caso)
Sixteen years after his last solo exhibition, Matteo Fato returns to exhibit in the city where he was born and still lives. The exhibition takes shape from his connection to place, developing a reflection on the relationship between the artist and the territory. It unfolds across various sites in Pescara: from the spaces of Fondazione La Rocca, producer of the exhibition to key city museums, extending to temporary interventions in public space. Each venue reflects on intertwined themes—the natural and urban landscape, the history of Abruzzo, and the history of art—forming a personal portrait of the city. The title— What’s difficult is to forget what one has seen around the house (Portrait of Pescara by chance)—combines two quotes by Pescara-born writer Ennio Flaiano, asserting the lasting presence of the images one grows up with and is habitually surrounded by. The exhibition’s starting and returning venue, Fondazione La Rocca, hosts an anthology that brings together the themes developed in the other venues. Unpublished works created for the occasion are presented alongside earlier pieces, touching on the genres central to the artist’s practice: portraiture, landscape, still life, and d’après (reinterpretations of existing works). The diversity of media reflects Fato’s expansive approach to painting: installation, video, printmaking, and sculpture. On this occasion, Fondazione La Rocca also unveils a new space: the Project Space/FLR, a former fishermen’s cooperative shed adjacent to the main office. It houses an immersive installation conceived as an archive and Wunderkammer (chamber of wonders), bringing together a heterogeneous array of materials—from paintings and sculptures to documentation videos and study objects. The artist envisions this space as a “staging of painting” that reveals the truth of the medium.
