BRANDON NDIFE & GIANGIACOMO ROSSETTI
On view in The Uncanny House at Casa di Goethe, Rome
March 28–September 3, 2024

The exhibition The Uncanny House, investigates the terms “uncanny” and “house”, creating a new dialogue that is dedicated to these phenomena from the perspective of the present. It examines the "uncanny" as a leitmotif that has inspired literary fantasy, fairy tales, horror stories and artistic creation since the early 19th century. The works of eighteen international artists tell of the presence of the uncanny in the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived in the center of Rome between 1786 and 1788. Now that the physical traces of his presence have disappeared, interstitial spaces, chimeras and forgotten voices become visible.

Gregor Schneider, with the work Odenkirchener Str. 202: Rheydt, elaborates a reflection on the concept of historical removal in the former residence of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels; Dora Budor, with traces on the walls, presents a site-specific work made especially for the Casa di Goethe, as does Nico Vascellari, who refers to a story concerning the place that hosts the exhibition: the story of Guido Zabban, a Jewish family father who remained hidden in the mezzanine of the apartment to escape the rounding up of the city by German troops; Rachel Whiteread, in her constant artistic research towards the idea of home, with casts of objects, investigates the phantasmal nature of this space. There are also Max Hooper Schneider’s childhood music box, Mathis Altmann’s doll houses, Ser Serpas’s objects stacked in the attic, Augustas Serapinas’s abandoned windows, Marina Xenofontos’s closed doors, Mélanie Matranga’s yellowed curtains, Caspar Heinemann’s inaccessible treasure chests, Anna Franceschini’s living wigs, BRANDON NDIFE’s manipulated objects, Tomaso De Luca’s insidious traps, Giovanna Silva’s faint signs, Analisa Teachworth’s depths, GIANGIACOMO ROSSETTI’s dark atmospheres, and Lenard Giller’s fickle ghosts.

Curated by Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin

For more information, please visit Casa di Goethe's website.