ROSSELLA VASTA

With Otto per Otto (Eng: Eight for Otto), Rossella Vasta presents eight works created last year, dedicated as a homage to Otto Nehm, who died in 2006. The artist and the doctor, collector and patron of the arts from the German town of Witten were bound together in close friendship since the early Nineties.

The title _Orpheus’ Journey _evokes the mythical journey of Orpheus to the underworld. From there, as Hades had allowed him because of the beauty of his art, Orpheus wanted to lead his deceased wife Eurydice back from the realm of the dead into the world of the living. Playing the lyre while striding ahead of her, he was forbidden only one thing: to turn around and look at her before returning from the world of shadows. We all know how the story ends.

Aside from a recapitulation of Orpheus’ epic failure, the artist is primarily concerned with the role of art, through which it is possible for us to open emotional and intellectual spaces beyond ordinary sentiments, experiences and possibilities. Spaces to which, as Vasta herself writes, ‘one returns after some time, for a reunion, to escape oblivion...’

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with a very personal text by the artist, to which she adds excerpts from her intensive correspondence with Otto Nehm.