Primo Round: eleven artists at Studio Campo Boario

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Primo Round opens at 8 pm on Thursday 15 October 2026 at Studio Campo Boario in Rome. Curated by Andrea Iezzi and conceived by Alberto D’Amico, Paolo Bielli and Stefania Fabrizi, it runs until 31 October and is part of the official Rome Art Week 2026 programme.

The project brings together eleven artists: Goffredo Adinolfi, Paolo Bielli, Alberto D’Amico, David Fagioli, Lino Frongia, Stefania Fabrizi, Gisella Penazzi, Piero Pompili, Massimo Ruiu, Daniele Sigismondo and Massimo Scognamiglio.

A group exhibition conceived as an encounter

The title Primo Round and the poster openly evoke boxing: the ring, the guard, confrontation and the beginning of a match. This visual frame presents the exhibition as a space of relationships among different works, techniques and generations, without turning it into a competition or ranking.

The roles are clearly shared: Andrea Iezzi curates the exhibition, while Alberto D’Amico, Paolo Bielli and Stefania Fabrizi conceived it. Eleven participants make the project collective and invite viewers to discover its juxtapositions directly in the exhibition space.

How will they approach this round?

Before seeing the works, the most productive question remains open: how will the artists approach this round? They may attack, keep their distance, resist or move sideways; they may confront the metaphor or refuse it. A group exhibition truly begins when works stop being a list of names and start changing one another through proximity, pauses and friction.

Before the opening, the first round is a promise of tension. We do not know who will occupy the centre, who will work at the edges, which images will absorb the blow of the space and which will return it. That uncertainty keeps the title from becoming a ready-made explanation.

What does boxing mean in art?

Boxing gives art a powerful vocabulary: discipline and risk, body and rule, solitude and audience, attack and defence. In the ring every gesture is visible and irreversible; in an exhibition, combat can become a metaphor for making, exposing oneself and sustaining another person’s gaze.

In 1913 Umberto Boccioni drew *Dynamism of a Human Body: Boxer*: Futurism sought not a fixed portrait of the athlete but the energy that shattered and recomposed the body. In the same era, George Bellows turned crowded New York bouts into masses of flesh, light and spectators; *Dempsey and Firpo* preserves the instant when the champion flies through the ropes.

Boxing entered cinema early. Stanley Kubrick developed his photographic essay *Prizefighter* into *Day of the Fight*, his first short film, in 1951: he studies anticipation, training and the time leading to the bout. In 1976 *Rocky* made the defeated fighter a universal image of possibility and endurance; in 1980 Martin Scorsese’s *Raging Bull* used the ring to enter Jake LaMotta’s rage and self-destruction.

From Boccioni to Bellows, Kubrick, *Rocky* and Scorsese, boxing is never only sport. It is movement edited into form, social theatre, public ritual, a test of identity and a narrative machine. Primo Round will work if this legacy becomes the rhythm of the visit: advance, stop, retreat, change perspective and look again. The answer can only emerge inside the exhibition.

Primo Round within Rome Art Week 2026

Its inclusion in the official Rome Art Week circuit places Primo Round within the citywide programme connecting studios, galleries, independent spaces, institutions, curators and artists across Rome. Studio Campo Boario becomes one of the stops through which visitors can explore the contemporary scene.

The exhibition remains open until 31 October, beyond the central days of the event, allowing visitors to return after the opening and view the work outside the concentration of launch events.

Visitor information

Primo Round opens Thursday 15 October 2026 at 8 pm at Studio Campo Boario, Rome, and runs from 15 to 31 October. It is curated by Andrea Iezzi, conceived by Alberto D’Amico, Paolo Bielli and Stefania Fabrizi, and included in Rome Art Week 2026.

Before visiting, check Studio Campo Boario and Rome Art Week channels for the complete address, opening hours and updates. This page will be updated when the final release and installation photographs become available.