On 25th February 2022 in Rome, Contemporary Cluster inaugurated Per Speculum in Aenigmate, a special project which, for the first time at Palazzo Brancaccio, will forge a dialogue between Aurel K. Basedow’s new body of pictorial works and some of the iconic design pieces of the duo Draga & Aurel, to which he belongs.

For Contemporary Cluster, Draga and Aurel have thus conceived of a hybrid itinerary that thoroughly exhibits the results of their artistic production. With the same rhythm as a musical score – consisting of notes but also slurs, accents, and rests – they modulate intentionally “cathedral-like” environments, made up of the marked alternating rhythm of different elements: tubular lights, monochrome altarpieces or chairs, placed to emphasize spatial symmetry or disclose eclectic multicolored clusters, in which the large “canvases” create a counterpoint with a series of punctiform tables. The last room only houses Aurel’s artworks. A moment of intimacy, a “rest”, in which he focuses on inner themes, closely related to the current pandemic status; the concepts of fear or constraint are transferred and imprinted onto a set of papers where watery, continuous, and very decisive magmatic brush strokes unhesitatingly camouflage the peculiar aspects of photographic images, all selected from the artist’s personal archive.