25 February - 13 March 2022
PALAZZO BRANCACCIO c/o Contemporary Cluster Rome 
Critical text by Maria Chiara Valacchi

The work of the duo Draga & Aurel is in a perennially split state — a scission in which its simultaneous nature as furnishing object and artwork is revealed. The ordinary use of each of their products is amplified in the infinite reflections cast by the resin surfaces, which, appearing as thick glassy petrifications with sidereal nuances, rest on slender iron or bronze structures or even incorporate cement concretions themselves. Theirs is a consolidated formal and productive gestation, the aesthetic boundaries of which, however, Aurel recently decided to broaden, pushing beyond the paradigm of functionality, creating a series of works deprived of their strictest utilitarian task. These morph into veritable “canvases” resembling solid, translucent totems, sometimes containing fabric patterns and other times photographic images, often distended at the edges by the layering of paint and colored resins; a process that almost appears to be tied more to a very slow shamanic ritual than to the realm of painting. Resting the bases on the floor, Aurel bends over them, instinctively applying color, creating flows, crosses, and spirals, before subsequently modifying and erasing them in part; these elements contribute to disturbing the features of the bodies portrayed in the photos or the underlying warps of the fabric. The initial model is gradually lost, drowned in a blanket of resin and other layers while the transparency of the extremely smoothed surface beckons us towards a discovery of its inner artificial sedimentation; as with much of their furniture, each user is faced with this knowing seamlessness between content and container. For Contemporary Cluster in Rome, Draga and Aurel have conceived of a hybrid itinerary that thoroughly exhibits the results of their artistic production. With the same rhythm as a musical score – consisting of notes but also slurs, accents, and rests – they modulate intentionally “cathedral-like” environments, made up of the marked alternation of different elements: tubular lights, monochrome altarpieces or chairs, placed to emphasize spatial symmetry or disclose eclectic multicolored clusters, in which the large “canvases” described above create a counterpoint with a series of punctiform tables. The last room only houses Aurel’s works. A moment of intimacy, a “rest”, in which he focuses on inner themes, closely related to the current pandemic status; concepts of fear or boredom are transferred and imprinted onto a set of papers, where watery, continuous, and very decisive magmatic brush strokes unhesitatingly camouflage the peculiar aspects of black-and-white photographs, all selected from the artist’s personal archive. The mysterious and inextinguishable concept of concealing can again be found in this array of little paper records, together with a new sense of fragility. The figures reproduced in each print, and their supporting material, lose their intrinsic value, becoming nothing more than a faint testimony to their initial pathos; the focus is inevitably shifted to the density of the gesture and to the temporal nature that accompanies the coating as it annihilates the image. Here, Aurel performs an additional act of denial, also freeing himself once and for all from the structural aspect of the work, the subject; a landing at “ground zero”, a place from which to rebegin to design tomorrow.