On Sunday 3 May at 11 am, the gallery AICA | Andrea Ingenito Contemporary Art, at via Massimiano 25, will open the group exhibition entitled Pompeii Project, conceived by Andrea Ingenito and curated by Serena Ribaudo, born of the desire to revisit a world-famous archaeological site by highlighting its historical and universal roots. Previewed nationally at the fifth edition of MIA Milan Image Art Fair 2015, in its first, exclusively photographic phase, the project now continues to grow, embracing varied and heterogeneous forms of artistic expression. Each according to their own highly personal style and medium, the protagonists will explore the memory of a place, its uniqueness and its most intimate essence.
The ancient meets the contemporary: visionary images by Suzanne Moxhay and Barbara Nati, photographs that tell the ever-present past of one of the most representative surviving sites of historical, cultural and anthropological interest. Shots in which the pragmatic elements of Pompeian reality, which we know so well, are transposed into dreamlike, utopian and at times apocalyptic atmospheres – and, for this reason, hitherto unknown. A twofold perspective is offered to our gaze by the precious diptychs of the Ragusa-born photographer Sandro Scalia. From bottom to top, from the blue sky to the sunlit ground, from wall coverings to floor coverings: views enclosed in two different points of view, for a single overall vision, taken in at a glance. The material dimension is expressed through the sculptural language of the Sicilian artist Giacomo Rizzo. Giving voice to a method closely linked to the well-known history of Pompeii, which pervades much of an artistic practice particularly devoted to the archaeology of nature, the sculptor creates and exhibits a rock cast for the occasion. Through the artistic journey and presence of these protagonists, the importance of an artistic treasure, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, will be highlighted once again. The beginning of a journey, then, with a view to ever greater promotion and dissemination of this carefully conceived exhibition project through national and international venues.
Pompeii diptych, 33 x 140 cm, 2015, detail
The Pompeii Project is presented at this stage in its first phase – exclusively, and I would say uniquely, photographic. It is, however, soon destined to keep growing, embracing varied and heterogeneous forms of artistic expression: from sculpture to painting to video art. In the prestigious setting of MIA Fair Milan, the three photographers Suzanne Moxhay, Barbara Nati and Sandro Scalia will explore, each according to their own highly personal style, the memory of a place, its uniqueness and its most intimate essence.
In his diptychs Sandro Scalia cloaks the Pompeian topoi in a veil of metaphysical suspension. Scalia offers figurative enigmas, playing with solids/voids, light/shadow, concave/convex, interior/exterior, curved lines/straight lines. The complex arrangement creates effects of estrangement, and the viewer’s eye is invited to undertake an ideal re-creation and a sentimental hermeneutics. By breaking down the images through the shifting of surfaces, syntactic puzzles are grafted onto a conceptual and highly refined sense of composition. The colour, moreover, saturated and of adamantine purity, restores to this vision its essence of reality. – Serena Ribaudo
[source Andrea Ingenito / Pompeii Project
