JOSEPH PACE AL PANTHEON
JOSEPH PACE AT THE PANTHEON

Joseph Pace, Ave Crux, Spes Una
From 14 September to 1 November 2021
Locations: Pantheon, Direzione dei Musei Statali di Roma, Basilica Colleggiata di Santa Maria ad Martyres, Piazza della Rotonda, Roma

The Pantheon will present the works of contemporary Italian artist Joseph Pace in a new Pantheon exhibition after his solo 2018 exhibition Joseph Pace, Sacra Sacrorum, the Sacred of the Sacred ThingsAve Crux, Spes Una (Ave Crux, Our Only Hope), the major new show will include more than 12 new works from Pace’s Midas series, featuring sculptures made from vintage fashion jewellery.

    The exhibition, curated by Emanuel von Lauenstein Massarani, presents twelve works by the international artist Joseph Pace all made with found and industrial recycled objects, such as crucifixes, rare miscellaneous pearls and bijoux, primarily vintage, that the artist collected worldwide. With this solo exhibition, Joseph Pace intends to draw attention to the values of faith and spirituality, according to the artist, the last bastions of human freedom.

    Among the works in the catalog, the “Astylar Cross of the Pantheon”, a large processional cross, which will remain in the Pantheon’s permanent art collection.

    Pace’s works are created with found objects and thousands of rare pieces of costume jewelry, primarily vintage, which the artist collected worldwide, thus creating a sort of “Industrial Archeology Research” applied to the decoration of the body of our times. Pace’s work reflects a refined and aestheticizing language with which the artist reinterprets many of our psychic realities. Inspired by different sources such as hight fashion, history and decorative arts, the artist uses different techniques influenced by the iconography of mass society, philosophy and psychoanalysis. Joseph Pace is one of the the leading exponents of “filtranisme”, the philosophical and artistic neo existentialist current that he founded in Paris in the mid 80s. His work is part of an artistic and intellectual path through which the artist reinterprets our deepest psychic realities.

    Joseph Pace (Morbegno, Italy, 1959), is an Italian painter and sculptor whose works have been exhibited in institutions and museums throughout the world. Grew up in Africa, he studied literature, sociology and psychoanalysis at the Sorbonne University of Paris, and Sapienza and UniromaTre Universities of Rome.