Today my friend and I took a mid-morning trip to Acquario Romano, also known as Casa dell'Architettura, where our internship director had told us that there was an underground gallery (properly named the -1 Art Gallery) where Gio Pistone, one of the other street artists Jessica manages, had contributed to a special exhibition. The -1 Art Gallery is literally the basement of the Acquario Romano building and made up of two tunnel-like corridors that are commissioned to various artists to paint in their respective styles every few months. The "Hic sunt Leones" show is a collaboration between Gio Pistone, who does colorful pieces of whimsical monsters, and Nicola Alessandrini, whose artwork leans more on the grotesque surrealist side combining gore and animals to create haunting beasts. It took us a while to figure out how to get downstairs (through an elevator in the awesomely decorated front room the concierge man failed to tell us about when we asked him how to get there), but once the doors opened we were immediately greeted by the black walls crawling with abstract creatures. As you can see from the candid of my friend hugging the wall, we were pretty excited to see Gio's work in person.

The movement of the curved ceilings gives the space so much animation and almost brings these paintings to life as they literally surround you and engulf you into this mysterious, slightly creepy world of the depths of these artists' consciousness. The collaborative effects of their monsters eating each other and slithering around the entire space meeting at the tips of corners and interacting in the archways gave this exhibit such an interesting vibe of realistic-meets-cartoon and whimsy intermixed with dystopia. I really enjoyed looking at the bright, bold colors and smooth lines Gio uses in her figures outlined in crisp black. The repeated use of eyeballs and pointed, stuck-out tongues and little arms and fingers characteristic of all of her work was very charming, and we couldn't help but coo at some of the little monsters on the walls even though they had sharp teeth and were eating bleeding mice (thanks to the genius of Nicola Alessandrini). It was also very interesting to see Nicola's work because he is someone I'd never heard mentioned in my street art research thus far, but his artistic talent (no matter how unsettling the images are) is undeniably excellent.

In a side door from Hic sunt Leones we found ourselves in a white room facing a decorated wall signed by the famous Diamond that read "Chinese Room" with oriental buildings painted in bright red and an arched doorway adorned with golden dragons. The quality of his work is impeccable and we were immediately impressed, but then noticed that the white walls seemed to be textured with some other sketches. We realized that there were more architectural features and portraits painted and we couldn't tell if these were preliminary sketches or if they had been painted over in white paint. After looking it up online we found out that this room had actually been entirely decorated in this style until a few weeks ago and they are now getting ready to transition into the next show. We looked through the virtual tour and oh man I wish I had known about it earlier because it looked absolutely awesome. The sad but cool feature about this gallery is that since the artists are painting directly on the walls every few months when their exhibitions are over they repaint the walls white to start afresh and new painters come in to leave their mark. It kind of reflects the cycle of street art and the come-and-go mentality that follows it because a new piece can appear on the streets out of the blue while another will be up one day and gone the next. Actually, Alice Pasquini had done a show there last year that was replaced with Gio and Nicola's artwork (which is only going to be up for a few more days because the exhibition ends this Saturday).

I'm glad we got a chance to go see more actual art because, for one, it's good to know what kinds of mediums you're working with and representing as we help our internship director mange these various street artists along with they she means when these artists are looking to do commissioned work or exhibition-type shows. It's also important to be familiar with who you're working for because we're now very excited about the possibilities that lie ahead with helping these artists further their careers and create more of these things we were personally so awe-struck by (not to mention that we both now really want to meet Gio to talk about her inspiration and how she got started with painting these fabulous fiends). As we get further and further into the logistical side of things and get used to sitting in front of the computer it's nice to get out and remind ourselves of how interesting the world of street art is and why it's such an exciting field to be in, especially in the up-and-coming community in Rome.