George Rouy

The 2026 programme of Conciliazione 5 – a space for contemporary art conceived by the Holy See’s Dicastery for Culture and Education – is curated by the internationally renowned art historian Donatien Grau: a window always open onto art and its ability to engage with the great themes of our time, freely and profoundly, generating new questions and new thoughts, and thus opening up the possibility of transformation – significant not only on a cultural and civic level, but also on a spiritual one.

Conciliazione 5’s 2026 programme is a year-long reflection on the act of reading through the work of leading contemporary artists. The first artist to inaugurate it was George Rouy with the exhibition “Presence in Form”, which opened on 20 March 2026 and runs until 17 June 2026 at the Holy See’s space, Conciliazione 5, Rome. George Rouy, born in 1994 in Sittingbourne (Kent, UK), lives and works in Faversham (Kent, UK). After graduating from Camberwell College of Arts in 2016, he has exhibited internationally, including: Copistes, a collaborative exhibition between the Musée du Louvre and the Centre Pompidou-Metz in Paris (2025); States of Being, at Société in Berlin (2025); Visions of the World, at the Kampa Museum in Prague (2025); The Bleed, Part II, at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles (2025), and many others.

George Rouy sought to transform his personal reading experienc, which follows the oral traditio, into a true art form: by constantly listening to audiobooks whilst painting, he has made the painting a testament to all the texts he has heard, and the painting itself a crystallisation of the spiritual experience of listening to the text being read.

The work on display at Conciliazione 5 is, in fact, both painting and sound, presenting itself as a layering of symbols and images in which the canvas, an abstract, open space, serves as a pictorial surface of past and future signs. Among his intentions is an invitation to read the work as if it were a text.

The installation is complemented by an audio track broadcast on the street once a day and accessible via a QR code, transforming the exhibition into a sensory experience, a novel bridge between pictorial vision and oral tradition.

With George Rouy, the window at Conciliazione 5 becomes a union of listening, reading and viewing: the viewer can admire with their eyes a sound-based work, created from its history of reading and listening to sounds, which challenges the viewer to experience art as a process of deep listening and active viewing.