“Contact Point” – Exhibition at Temple Rome’s Gallery of Art
Temple University Rome is pleased to present Contact Point, an exhibition curated by Heather Susanna Roach that opens at Temple Rome’s Gallery of Art on Tuesday, November 10, 2026 from 6:00-8:00 PM. The exhibition will remain on view until December 2, 2026.
Contact Point explores works of art created through physical contact with a matrix, where the trace left behind becomes the artwork itself. Utilizing frottage with discarded riso masters, incised ceramics, and image transfer, the artists engage in a dialogue with their personal memories and experiences of Rome.
This exhibition offers viewers a glimpse into the varied perspectives of three creators: a newcomer to the city, an artist who explores the city by motorino, and a Roman artist whose work excavates its many layers. The city serves as inspiration for texture, shared history, and romanticism expressed across printmaking, video, and sculpture.
Contact Point highlights how these artists come together in one space to manipulate surfaces in new and unexpected ways, reflecting Rome through texture and physical memory.
Michael Vasquez is a queer artist, printmaker, and educator originally from Santa Cruz, California. Currently an MFA candidate in Printmaking at Temple University, studying in Rome, his multidisciplinary practice explores memory, intimacy, belonging, and the traces we leave behind through printmaking, photography, poetry, and printed ephemera.
Maddalena Scuderoni is a self-taught artist whose non-academic path is deeply rooted in tradition. Through formal reduction, Scuderoni investigates sites of tension, focusing on elements of imbalance and instability. She is drawn to objects endowed with a strong expressive charge, placing them in environments conceived as spaces for interaction and dialogue, working with the intensity they generate and the perceptual dynamics they activate.
Andrea Aquilanti is an artist whose practice unfolds in continuity across drawing, painting, and immersive site-specific installation. His work emerges from an ongoing dialogue with public and private spaces, with a particular focus on the city of Rome and its visual and conceptual heritage of classical art and architecture, reactivated through contemporary languages and technological mediation.
For additional information, please contact Shara Wasserman, Director of Exhibitions, at shara@temple.edu.