Almost a year ago, the White Noise Gallery, a Roman research gallery founded in 2014 by , closed Eleanor Aloise And Carlo Maria Lolli Ghetti. Now its former director, still in Rome, arrives Russian contemporarycontemporary soul of Russian galleryhistoric space with a 125-year career behind him, for “a structured consultancy aimed at the contemporary art business community“. An adventure that complements the gallery’s program of exploring new ultramodern languages through a series of outdoor pop-up exhibitions. We spoke to him about it.
Interview with Carlo Maria Lolli Ghetti, new consultant at Russo Contemporary
A new adventure with the Russo Gallery after the White Noise Gallery line closed in October.
After the closure of White Noise, I had the opportunity to retire from being a gallery owner and to devote myself mainly to teaching. The adventure with the Russo Gallery is part of a broader direction of consulting I am starting in the art sector, focused on the corporate industry. In my previous life as an engineer, I worked as a consultant in the most diverse areas, from large distribution to logistics to Formula 1: today it is time to combine this background with the professionalism acquired over the years in the art world.
Why did you choose Russo Contemporary, the contemporary soul of Galleria Russo?
Working as a consultant allows me to work with realities that I like and that I believe can help heal some of the distortions I see in the Italian system. Galleria Russo fits these selection criteria perfectly: a healthy, family-run business with a 125-year history in a sector where the average lifespan of players does not exceed two decades.
Russo Contemporary’s new course tells the story of new director Carlo Maria Lolli Ghetti
What is the new contemporary art project of this historic gallery?
Galleria Russo already has a valid contemporary program, much appreciated by its collectors, and I was asked not to change it but to add it. The starting point are precisely the gallery’s historical collectors, who are extremely cultured and familiar with the languages of modern art. The direction is therefore determined by the need not to betray such an important “fan base”, but to inspire them for even more modern communication languages.
What will be your personal contribution and vision?
One of the biggest lies of the art system is that the modern and ultra-contemporary markets are two watertight compartments. My contribution will aim to organize the vision that already characterizes the gallery towards the creation of a new parallel project inspired by the languages of the ultra-contemporary. My contribution will not be purely curatorial in nature, but will address industrial organization in a more organic way.
What education and experience do you have?
I started with management consulting, which I got into during my engineering studies. After the LUISS Master of Art, where I worked again as a teacher for five years, I worked as an artistic project coordinator for a year Garbage patch status by Maria Cristina Finucci, which took me to important stages such as the UNESCO headquarters in Paris or the Venice Biennale. At this point, together with Eleonora Aloise, the adventure of the White Noise Gallery began, which gave me great satisfaction but also problems. The return to the origins was natural and led to today’s path: a structured consultancy aimed at the business world of contemporary art.
The Russo Contemporary in Rome
Who are the other people behind the project?
The most important partner is my customer who is also part of the working team. In fact, the idea of this consultancy was born from the gallery in the people of Fabrizio Russo and the young Francesca Romana and Alberto. The latter, the new generation of the gallery, are the true soul of the project, which sees me in the role of support and guide in a world that they know well, but which they have always encountered from a different point of view.
What audience are you targeting?
The target group is the real cardinal point that guides the project. Compared to a completely new opening, which requires the creation of an offer and an exhibition line to attract a specific audience, this project already assumes a customer base, one of the largest on the Italian scene. This audience has been supporting the gallery for more than a century and their choices must be considered. We know that this project has been successful when collectors want to hang a work by a contemporary artist next to each de Chirico, Balla or Pirandello and admire the resulting dialogue.
When is the first exhibition?
We are currently in the full preparation phase and given the nature of this adventure there is no real reason to anticipate the opening and risk jeopardizing some aspects. Given the amount of work required to get such an ambitious idea off the ground properly, we expect to be able to present the first event in the first quarter of 2024.
Claudia GirauD