Caffe Florian - Pietro Ruffo: Negative Liberty. Until July 31st the young yet affirmed artist, Pietro Ruffo, based in Rome, transforms the Chinese Room in the Caffe Florian in the Piazza San Marco into a graphite wood populated by 3D dragonflies.
Pietro Ruffo: Negative Liberty. Dragonflies swarm out of this forest, their four wings propelling them horizontally in frenzied flight. These slender-bodied yet fearsome predators feed on other insects, and their short lifespan and frenetic movement causes us to ponder the concept of freedom: “positive liberty”, which is potentially totalitarian, and “negative liberty” which, according to philosopher Isaiah Berlin, stems from the absence of external constraints. A quotation from the Lebanese poet Gibran Kalhil Gibran on one of the walls of the Room offers further food for thought: “…if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.”