Eliseo Mattiacci: Sculpture in Action in Rome is a fresh examination of the developments in Mattiacci's sculpture from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, dates that embrace the two decades he spent living and working in Italy's vibrant capital. New research by the contributors to this book reveal how the exceptional constellation of studios, galleries and institutional spaces as well as the architectural and landscape settings Rome offered were the crucial factor in Mattiacci's rapid sophistication as an artist. In the mid-1960s the city was already a major centre for art, literature, theatre and cinema, and the setting for numerous avant-garde performative 'actions' and 'happenings'. The Piazza del Popolo district was crowded with bars and galleries, and Mattiacci soon became warmly acquainted with various gallerists and artists, including the Arte Povera practitioners Jannis Kounellis and Pino Pascali. In this challenging and competitive environment Mattiacci sought to establish his own distinctive exploratory style, investigating materials, forms, sounds, presentations and actions in endlessly novel and inventive ways. The extraordinary Tubo, the long flexible yellow coil of metallic tubing that could be endlessly rearranged and even carried out of a gallery into the streets by files of admirers, was first exhibited in 1967, and made his name. The following year he staged Lavori in corso, a trio of very popular performances, in the Circo Massimo, which involved spinning huge umbrellas in imitation of the Earth's rotations and revolutions. Percorso, in 1969, was Mattiacci again in action, this time driving a noisy roadroller into and around a gallery. In the 1970s - a difficult decade of political violence in Italy - Mattiacci continued to explore both outwardly and inwardly. He was increasingly fascinated by archaeology, antique alphabets and non-literate cultures, notably the USA's First Peoples, and he created actions and presentations that ranged from exhibitions of x-rays of his own inner organs to appearances encased in 'bandaging' and plaster. In 1981 he first showed the admired Roma, a collection of 50 large sinuous metal shapes inspired by the volutes of classical and Baroque architecture, once again an artwork that is endlessly rearrangeable, indoors or out. Sculpture in Action is the beautifully illustrated account of Mattiacci's artistic creativity in those decades.

This catalogue accompanies the monographic exhibition that Museo Vincenzo Vela, in Mendrisio-Ligornetto, has dedicated to the works of Lawrence Carroll (b. 1954). Born in Melbourne, Carroll moved to California with his family in 1958. Some twenty-five years later, in 1984 he moved once again, to New York, where he pursued his artistic development, having little concern for the fashions of the moment but a profound sense of personal commitment and dedication to the language and practice of painting. As he understands it, painting abuts on many other art forms: in his hands it becomes the slow stratification of colour, materials, and objects, in which the surface of the painting interacts with the surrounding environment, blurring the borders between painting, sculpture, and installation. Moving from place to place, Carroll has always been most at home in the quiet of his studio, which provides him with the intimacy he requires to express himself. Here he explores duration as the fragility of time and space, placing memory at the heart of his poetics. Old remembrances emerge on the surface, overlaying each other layer upon layer, like an accumulation of light, dust and matter in pale colour tones as close to the colour of the canvas as possible. Inherently porous as the surface is, one can make out graphemes and underlying traces, while objects are applied directly onto it. The result is a poetics of rarefied references, narratives that gradually form and are at the same time swathed in a metaphysical atmosphere of suspension, a sort of 'metaphysics of the quotidian'. Designed like an autobiography installed in the rooms of the museum-house, the exhibition provides an overview of Carroll's artistic development, from his earliest works to the present day, highlighting the subtle recurring themes as well as the fresh departures that have taken him on wholly new artistic journeys. The catalogue offers the first ever overall assessment of the artist's work as it has evolved during his life. The book is lavishly illustrated, and includes a full biography and comprehensive bibliography, as well as providing an engaging interview with the artist. Text in English and Italian.