14 Feb-15 Apr 2006. A new site-specific installation reflects on the weight both physical and metaphorical of painting.

Jannis Kounellis. Until 15 April. Kounellis, a sort of interior decorator of tactile values for the knowledgeable, has always been marvellously clever with funky stage sets in unusual materials: coal, jute, live horses and live flames, cobble stones and beeswax, a pregnant hooded woman crawling with bees all of which richly evoked the antique myths and the Mediterranean past. This time around his surfaces are sticky and glutinous and seem to point to the present. Metal cots are wrapped in wide bandages soaked in something congealed like dried blood or chocolate though we know it must be paint. Kounelliss ruefully romantic yearnings now are trying to allude to upheaval in the near east, to American torture and current events.

The invitation to this show splits open to sport a slender green cypress. But the installations it invites us to see are glossy, stodgy and gloomy. Valentina Bonomo Gallery, Via del Portico DOttavia 13, tel. 066832766. Edith Schloss