Marras’s flowers are never merely decorative. They are torn, stitched, embroidered, burned. They embody beauty that withstands the elements—the roses that grow among the rocks of Alghero, nourished by salt air and wind.

Valentina Bonomo Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the solo exhibition Vorrei riempire la tua stanza di rose by Antonio Marras, curated by Lorenzo Madaro, on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, from 3:00 to 9:00 PM, at Via del Portico d’Ottavia 13, Rome.

Valentina Bonomo Gallery presents Vorrei riempire la tua stanza di rose, a solo exhibition by Antonio Marras, curated by Lorenzo Madaro. The project revolves around a fragile yet tenacious figure: the rose, which in the artist’s work becomes a presence, a promise, a wound, a domestic apparition. More than a theme, it is a form capable of moving through images, materials, and memories, constantly shifting in status: a flower offered, a body held back, a face, an ornament, a relic, a fragment of a scene left suspended. The exhibition brings together an extensive body of works on paper and a series of ceramic pieces conceived and created specifically for the gallery spaces. Drawing and ceramic matter will not be presented as separate realms, but as parts of a single visual organism, shaped by a complex exhibition and installation project.

The works will inhabit the space through a pattern of proximity, interruptions, clusters, and openings, transforming the galleries into a mental room to be traversed slowly. Visitors will be invited to investigate its clues, constructing a sequence between what appears on the walls and what takes shape within the space. For Marras, drawing is a fundamental practice. It emerges in the course of everyday life during a journey, at a worktable, in the margins of an appointment and retains the speed of a thought taking shape as the hand moves. On the paper, the line breaks, shifts direction, sinks into colour, or leaves broad areas of breathing space. From this instability emerge solitary roses, bouquets held in slender vases, chairs, figures, profiles, uncertain anatomies, presences that seem to surface from memory. The ceramics shift this same energy towards weight, hollow space, and the resistance of the surface. They introduce a tactile and corporeal dimension: the mark is incised, distorted, gathered; the rose acquires volume while retaining a sense of vulnerability, as if it had just emerged from the fire and could still transform.

In ceramics, Marras finds a terrain where control coexists with chance, and where the memory of the gesture remains inscribed in the material. Vorrei riempire la tua stanza di rose suggests an act of giving, but also an affective invasion. The room evoked by the title may be intimate, real, lost, or desired; within the exhibition, it becomes the gallery itself, occupied by images that call for closeness and attention. Marras’s roses have thorns, they wither, they bend, at times becoming indistinguishable from a body or a face. They preserve beauty without shielding it from fragility and, for this reason, elude any purely decorative function. The project curated by Lorenzo Madaro embraces the expansive nature of Marras’s work, allowing the artworks to construct both a compelling overall vision and an attentive exploration of detail.