24/11/2025
Galleria Fonti is pleased to present Rise and Fall, an exhibition inspired by S.M. Eisenstein, featuring works by Michel Auder, Sam Porritt, Gavilán Rayna Russom, and Hans Schärer.
Rise and Fall originates from the alleged discovery of a series of erotic drawings by S.M. Eisenstein, which are said to have arrived in Italy in the 1960s through exchanges between members of the Italian Communist Party and the Soviet Union, and have since been kept by some of their heirs. These drawings, in which the visionary filmmaker visually experimented with the dynamics of gaze, subject and object, vo**ur and performer, later turned out to be simple prints.
Yet, they remain the generative spark for this exhibition which—already in its title borrowed from the featured installation—contemplates attraction and collapse, loss and the possibility of recomposition, gathering works that explore desire, sexuality, gaze, and intimacy.
The works of Gavilán Rayna Russom are drawn from a visual diary produced between 2004 and 2012. Rather than serving as preparatory sketches, these drawings constitute an ever-evolving archive of thoughts and emotions—an exercise in giving form to ideas still in development. Through this process, the artist transforms the sketchbook into a reflective and therapeutic space, a means to explore identity and the transformations taking shape in her life at the time. This body of work marks a pivotal chapter in Russom’s artistic trajectory: a period characterized by profound personal evolution and by the first articulations of themes such as gender fluidity, desire, sexuality, eroticism, and BDSM—subjects that would later become central to her artistic practice and personal life. The drawings document a sustained engagement with visual and journal writing as a form of mediation between the inner and outer worlds.
The Erotic Watercolors series by Hans Schärer reveals a surprisingly ironic and liberating dimension of female sensuality. Created between the 1960s and 1980s, these watercolors depict a universe inhabited by monumental, playful female figures immersed in surreal, theatrical settings. The women—often n**e or in ritual poses—dominate the pictorial space with a vitalistic energy that subverts traditional erotic representation. Men, when they appear, are reduced to comical or childlike figures, emphasizing the parodic dimension of desire. With translucent colors, spontaneous strokes, and an almost fairy-tale lightness, Schärer weaves together eroticism, irony, and spirituality, transforming intimacy into a collective rite. These works implicitly dialogue with his celebrated Madonnas series, setting the sacred and the profane, body and myth, in tension. The Erotic Watercolors thus reveal an artist who explores eroticism not as provocation, but as a poetic and liberating language.
In the video Rooftops and Other Scenes, Michel Auder transforms the city of New York into a silent theater of observation and discovery. Footage gathered between 1986 and 1996 from his twelfth-floor studio on Broadway and Canal Street becomes the vantage point from which his gaze extends over urban rooftops, half-open windows, couples, and occasional visual escapes toward nature. The video-diary format and the camera’s discreet stability serve as a device to probe the boundary between intimacy and public view: the artist captures everyday gestures that escape spectacle, suggesting instead a form of “participatory observation.” In this work, Auder also questions the relationship between the presence of the eye and the anonymity of the gaze, challenging our position as viewers and the subtle ethics of filming from the outside. Pain or Pleasure and Red Kiss explore the thin boundary between desire, vulnerability, and intimacy. Through raw and personal imagery, the artist transforms everyday life into a sensual and unsettling narrative where pleasure and pain merge into a single aesthetic and emotional experience.
Rise and Fall (2015) by Sam Porritt is the kinetic installation that gives the exhibition its title. The work combines sculpture, mechanics, and temporality: a machine built by the artist repeatedly lifts a sphere and lets it fall, generating a continuous cycle of ascent, descent, and rebound. This ceaseless motion becomes a metaphor for precariousness and the fragile balance between action and waiting, control and release. The fall evokes failure and loss of control, while the rebound introduces a sense of adaptation and resilience, recalling the inevitable cycles of life and time.
These themes also resonate in the drawings on view, where repeated and seemingly chaotic marks suggest the figuration of bodily fragments. In them, Porritt reflects on how the gaze constructs meaning, revealing our tendency to find the human even in what appears abstract.
