Like the terrestrial crust of the earth / which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul / is a miracle of mutual pressures.
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
On Thursday, September 15, 2025, at 7:00 pm, Quartz Studio is pleased to present Calore, the first solo show in Italy by the Franco-Brazilian Romain Dumesnil (Rouen, France, 1989).
Romain Dumesnil’s work is strongly connected to the natural world and the ecology of its invisible forces and materiality. In the recent years he has especially explored the intricated relations between the organic and the mineral worlds occurring in particular in volcanic phenomena and magnetic fields, both rooted into deep magmatic movements and strongly related to our planet ecosphere and living conditions.
In ‘Calore’, his first solo presentation in Italy, the artist presents a sculptural investigation of the symbolic and physical dynamics that sustain the Earth balance and our existence, inviting the visitors to experience a subtly glitched reality in an exhibition environment that has suffered micro-perturbations of its gravity, air quality and general equilibrium.
At Quartz Studio, Romain creates a site-specific installation com- posed of various volcanic stones disconcertingly floating in the air thanks to invisible magnetic forces. The black ropes that connect the stones to the space draw precarious lines that redefine the circulation possibilities inside the space and reveal a choreographic exercise of tension and balance.
In the space, the artist also produces a discreet intervention by vaporizing throughout the exhibition a tiny dose of carbon dioxide (CO2) obtained by heat-vaporizing in the laboratory a carat of rough diamond, another mineral resulting from volcanism, and the volume of which is equivalent to one minute of human exhalation.
Romain Dumesnil’s intervention from Quartz is an invitation to listen to the Earth, to its strength and its fragility, brought into focus—thanks to the opening quote from Anne Carson’s novel Autobiography of Red (1998)—as the skin of the soul in a precarious and constant tension with the Other. Calore is a project that is both poetic and ecological which, much like the hallmark of Canadian writer Anne Carson, adheres to the dissolution of form—both in a literary and metaphorical sense. Just as Carson reflects on love as tension, absence, and loss, Romain Dumesnil reflects on the condition of the individual on Earth by blending science and poetry.
In Anne Carson’s case, the artist confirms, I’m seduced by the hybrid form of her work, which straddles different literary genres and different eras. In particular, I feel very close to the idea of a 21st-century version of ancient myths. This idea has been present in my work for many years and in many ways.
