Starting on Thursday 15 September, the IDIS Città della Scienza will host the exhibition “Breathing – Arrhythmia in an Area” by Paolo Capelli, Paola Margherita and Marcello Anselmo at Spazio Galilei.
The exhibition project, supervised by Marco Isolino, concerns the geographical space of the former Italsider di Bagnoli, which has remained unchanged after decades of coexistence with damage, the mediation between the territory and its inhabitants, the domination of man over nature, and the almost salvific reluctance to take the path of transformation.
Wanting to transcend appearances and obvious critical points and elicit any critical judgment, Paolo Capelli, Paola Margherita, and Marcello Anselmo attempt to tell through the interdisciplinary expressive languages, the spasm of area, the unseen effects of a long, incomplete process, and the unexpected forms of transformation in the making.
Breathing is that instinctive gesture that allows each nature to express itself, to survive, to give itself form, and it is precisely from this assumption that the project comes to life, with an emphasis on the narrative that makes space as a physical place the protagonist not only in his architectural guide But its meaning as a place that generates feelings in the reading of an arrhythmia, to be understood as an uncertainty during which the moments of legitimate cessation of mind, the spread of nature over intention, and experimentation can be understood.
In the history of Naples, after the decommissioning of the factory, the Bagnoli area has in fact always been the subject of endless reflections and planning, but at the same time in a parallel way, a passage of years marked by the realization, in the collective imagination, of a timeless land, characterized by survival and experimentation.
Photographs by Paolo Capelli, sculptures by Paola Margherita and the documentary film and soundscape of Marcello Anselmo translate this process in a fundamental way, acknowledging the flow of life and transformation as Ville Rouge in the realization of their work.
“breathes – says coordinator Marco Isolino- He has the ambition to try to describe the arrhythmia in Panoli’s view: the spasm, but at the same time also the potential, of the region; The invisible effects of a long process in which each shape can unexpectedly become a transformative principle in the making, “no more” but also “not yet”.
Paola Margherita, transcending the two-dimensionality of graphic representation, recreates a series of drawings depicting the same subject from different perspectives. Using a technique halfway between drawing and pencil drawing, he grasps on gray cardboard, drawings linked to perspective choices, then slices them along paths in harmony with perspective direction, printing folds and curves so that the cut pieces can reconnect to each other, to create volumes, by Cotton threads. By assembling parts of a drawing that no longer fit together into a painting with a three-dimensional unit, the artist returns in sculptural language a representation of space that reveals the fragmentation of the perception of the same, where the factor of time is written in the tailoring and movement of those observing and traversing the space.
Paolo Capelli, in his photographic research, applies, in a peculiar fusion, a rigorous architectural vision to the ruins of industrial archaeology, making him fascinated by the landscapes created around them, defining her poetry despite stagnation and mental separation, making it a way in the population to pose social living spaces for many years. Visions, mostly in black and white and desaturated colour, which lead us to reflect on the state of places, trying to give a picture of the new hypothetical self of the area and to highlight the present dissonance between what is presently shown in Bagnoli before. eyes and what the mind can inevitably lead itself to imagine.
Marcelo Anselmo presents two works: a documentary called Posidonia. Metropolis backdrops and an audio scene that combines the research of the three artists and accompanies the visitor along the exhibition path.
Posidonia. Metropolis Wallpapers is a journey, audio and visual, on the coast, popping up and immersing near the city of Naples. It tells of the deep connection between the sea and the city through the (autobiographical) narrative of Claudio Ripa, an underwater historian of Naples, a deep connoisseur of urban seabeds and a truly world champion in 1959’s shooting. The story reveals an extraordinary Naples, depicted in the gaps that separate between sea and land; boundaries between emerging and submerged cities; An invisible but constantly changing place; A space that lives, surprisingly, on marine fauna and flora; An area in constant motion.
The soundscape, made up of contrasting elements, is surrounded by photographs by Paolo Capelli and sculptures by Paola Margherita. Interlacing audio suggestions from original recordings of the industrial zone into reference audio materials taken from films and
Radio programs produced since the 1950s combined with original music composed by NiNo BruNo and eight tracks inspired by the life and dismantling of the big factory.
“Breathing wants to be so – Coordinator contact – Exhibition / manifesto, invitation, addressed to all artists of the territory of Naples, so that through their research they can contribute to the story of the unique place where, after years of stagnation, the Neapolitans return to observe and listen to the same land.
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