What if our image had become more real than we are?
We have entrusted our faces to screens. We have learned to construct a version of ourselves, to modify it, select it, and put it on display. We are constantly connected and, at the same time, increasingly distant from the authentic experience of encounter: relationships take place through a screen, while emotions and vulnerabilities are reduced to an increasingly synthetic grammar made of icons, symbols, and signs. We do not simply show who we are; we construct the identity we choose to place before the gaze of others.
It is here that a sense of alienation begins to emerge, a subtle distance from ourselves. Beneath this incessant flow, a voice seems to call for a pause, a space in which to return to who we truly are.
It is within this uneasy and vulnerable territory of our time that the artistic vision of ROSARIO OLIVA takes shape.
From September 19, CathArt Gallery in Varese opens its doors to AL-TER, a solo exhibition by Rosario Oliva, an artist with a distinctive authorial voice and an exhibition history of international scope. The exhibition, on view through September 30, 2026, is curated by Carla Pugliano, with critical texts and commentary by art historian and curator Giulia Bonetti.
The exhibition originates in the fracture between identity and self-representation, questioning the increasingly ambiguous relationship between the individual and the digital device, and the way in which it reshapes interpersonal dynamics and our experience of others, ultimately challenging our very perception of ourselves. This tension is transferred by Oliva onto the canvas, translated into gesture and form. Faces emerge through overlapping layers, shifts, and a loss of definition; features remain recognizable while, at the same time, seem to withdraw. In this oscillation between precision and dissolution, Oliva creates a form of painting capable of holding together digital experience, emotional dimension, and the physical presence of matter. The result is a language suspended between figuration and abstraction, where compositional rigor and expressive impulse coexist without one resolving into the other.
The contemporary relevance of this research is further reflected in the recent critical examination devoted to Identity, a work presented at the National Pavilion of Grenada as part of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Daniele Radini Tedeschi. Oliva’s work is also featured in the Atlante dell'Arte Contemporanea 2026, published by Giunti in the special MoMA edition.
The exhibition does not remain confined to the universe of the screen. AL-TER opens instead toward a more rarefied vision through a series of suspended places, where the noise of contemporary life seems gradually to recede. Urban echoes, expanded horizons, and forgotten objects compose mental spaces in which the human presence emerges primarily through what it has left behind.
A solitary chair, a silent trace of what is no longer there, becomes the witness to an unresolved absence. While in the works connected to digital communication the individual is immersed in an excess of visibility, here Oliva moves in the opposite direction: he thins out the visible, slows down time, and makes room for silence. This register also includes the charcoal works, in which the artist reduces the language of painting to the essential relationship between mark and surface. Black gathers and disperses; forms and strokes emerge from the white only to dissolve once again. It is a process of subtraction in which what remains is not so much representation as its trace.
It is through the dialogue between these three languages — the overexposure of the digital image, the silence of suspended places, and the essential nature of charcoal — that AL-TER finds its fulfillment. Within each, something undergoes transformation: identity, place, gaze.
Derived from the Latin alter, meaning “the other,” the title evokes the double, the alter ego, otherness, but also alteration and change. AL-TER therefore moves beyond the sole theme of social media, opening onto a broader reflection on the condition of the present and on the way we inhabit it.
On Saturday, September 26, at 5:30 PM, Rosario Oliva will present a live sketch performance, offering visitors the opportunity to witness the artist’s creative process firsthand.
The critical contribution is entrusted to Giulia Bonetti, painter, curator, and art historian, whose interdisciplinary background is complemented by extensive experience in museums and curatorial practice. She studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan and at Université Paris 8 Saint-Denis, while also pursuing studies in contemporary cinema and theatre and earning the qualification of master mosaic artist. For more than fifteen years, she has worked as a museum guide and educational facilitator, combining her artistic practice with research and art criticism.
She has curated two exhibitions dedicated to Rosario Oliva: DIALOGO A DUE (2023), at Galleria Ess&rre in Rome, and APEIRON (2025), at Galleria Medina in Rome. With AL-TER, she once again engages with the artist, critically accompanying this new phase of his research.
The exhibition is curated by Carla Pugliano, artist, founder and artistic director of CathArt Gallery, and Art Consultant for the Atlante dell'Arte Contemporanea, published by Giunti. In 2020, she obtained an International Academic Master’s degree with Maestro Roberto Ferri. Her artistic career has developed through significant institutional and exhibition contexts in Italy and abroad.
Active in the field of curatorship, she has developed several exhibition projects devoted to contemporary art, including Soglie Invisibili (2026), a group exhibition at the Museo Diocesano e Capitolare di Terni, in collaboration with Start Edizioni.
Further Information
ROSARIO OLIVA
Rosario Oliva was born in Naples in 1965. He trained at the local Art Institute and subsequently at IED – Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome, where he specialized in illustration.
In Rome, he collaborated with major Italian and European advertising agencies and production companies, creating illustrations, storyboards, shooting boards, and animations for campaigns for prominent brands, including Nissan, Alitalia, and Telecom.
In 1997, he expanded his practice into the emerging possibilities of digital creativity, focusing on digital illustration, photo retouching, 3D graphics, and animation. He is a creative director and artist, formerly at Olivastudio and currently at Pixelheads Studio, as well as a lecturer in Digital Animation at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti.
After years spent in the world of pixels, Oliva gradually returned to painting, reclaiming a direct relationship with support, colour, and gesture. This is not a return to tradition as a refuge, but a transformation of his artistic language, in which the visual culture developed through digital practice flows into painting.
His current experimentation moves between figuration and abstraction through different techniques — acrylic, oil, watercolour, and charcoal — maintaining a constant tension between control and impulse, definition and dissolution.
In 2026, Oliva was the subject of a critical presentation at the National Pavilion of Grenada, curated by Daniele Radini Tedeschi as part of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, with a synopsis dedicated to Identity. That same year, his artistic language was featured in the Atlante dell'Arte Contemporanea 2026, published by Giunti in the special MoMA edition.
Among his most significant exhibition experiences are the solo exhibitions APEIRON, at Galleria Medina in Rome in 2025, and DIALOGO A DUE, at Galleria Ess&rre in Rome in 2023, both curated by Giulia Bonetti; participation in the 5th Barcelona Art Biennale at MEAM – Museu Europeu d'Art Modern; as well as exhibitions at the Palazzo della Cancelleria Vaticana in Rome, the Biennale della Creatività di Ferrara, the Museo Benedetto Robazza in Rocca Priora, and the international group exhibition Orizzonti at Palazzo Sponza in Dubrovnik.
For further information about the artist:
rosariooliva.com
INFORMATION
Exhibition: September 19–30, 2026
Opening: Saturday, September 19, 2026, at 5:30 PM
Live Sketch Performance: Saturday, September 26, 2026, at 5:30 PM
Opening Hours:
Tuesday–Friday: 4:30–6:30 PM
Saturday: 10:30 AM–12:00 PM / 3:30–6:30 PM
Sunday: 3:30–6:30 PM
Venue: CathArt Gallery, Piazza Giovanni XXIII, 11 – Varese
Entrance from Via Salvo D’Acquisto
Admission: Free
Information:
+39 392 8081554
Facebook: CathArt Gallery
Instagram: @cathart_gallery
Website: CathArt Gallery
Email: cathartgallery@gmail.com