Trompe L’Oeil, from the french “To trick the eye”, is an exhibition of Marcello Crescenzi & Chiara Fazi, curated by Mauro Piccinini and NuFactory for the French Institute of Rome.
To celebrate the restoration of the historical Saint Louis de France’s auditorium, hosted in an underground fragment of the ancient Nero’s thermae, me and Chiara Fazi created a installation path of anamorphic paintings from the upper floor to the underground auditorium; each painting had a specific point of view, indicated by special signals, from which it appeard with the right proportions or facing the viewer despite of its non-parallel position and distorted lines.
Every painting portrays a key figure in the history of the St. Louis church and institut, from the roman origins of the place, with the portrait of Nero, to the modern age with the portrait of founder Jacques Maritain
An installation representing the salamander (symbol of the Saint Louis’ church and of the Institut) holding the lilium (symbol of France) is the last step of the path.
