^{Antonio Corradini’s La Puritá, 1720-1725, made of Carrera marble}

We’re now on the first floor of the famous Artempo. The ground floor display, including this Hans Bellmer (for you self-confessed Bellmer fans)

was an introduction to the overt themes of the show (body, architecture) and to the mysterious and broken-down vibe of the venue, once the palace of eclectic designer-artist-collector-entrepreneur Mariano Fortuny.

This first floor above the ground floor has only a small exhibition area, limited to only a few works, and the first one you see coming up the stairs is a video projected onto the variegated brick wall by Yael Davids called Face. In it, a young, dark-haired woman sits still while her hair rotates 360 degrees on her head, in a simple action that’s nonetheless fully eerie.

One turn to your right from there is the veiled virgin. And one turn to your right from there (after you’ve finished marveling at the transformation of marble into silk) is this delicate 1906 head by Medardo Rosso emerging from bronze,

set next to a series of digital photographs by Jorge Molder, from 2005, of faces blurred by motion, and light and time.

But it’s not until the next floor up that the exhibition’s most exhilarating ideas start breaking out. Coming tomorrow …