‘The gallery in Naples looks larger than the severe measurements on paper might suggest.
The gallery in Naples is a world apart from the one in Milan and it stretches out, with a far-reaching vision. Two stunning rooms on the left come side to side at the end…
The Scala aggettante (2015) juts out next to the entrance door, starting from the wall and traversing the space horizontally through the air. Contorted, it bears measuring instruments containing a slow alchemical reaction that points to memory and the transformation of time.
Placed almost centrally, the Il brindisi del marrano (2015) compresses the marrano. The marrano is motionless, limp, waiting for the impulse, the swelling…
Here it is. Strained and sputtering, the marrano pushes and raises the ladder, the hissing reaches the Pyrex cup, exciting the phosphor…
The room goes dark and the phosphor glows, becoming a bearer of memories, of hopes… and the white light comes on again. The marrano is exhausted and slowly collapses, waiting for the next breath… and new hope.
The Pergamena di luce (2015) is seized at front and rear by two stars, and the wall supports it, helped by silent lights. The lights turn off intermittently, revealing the traces, transparency, the ‘story’, the phosphorescence-memory.
The stars mingle the cosmic image with an earthly image of animality.
The side rooms contain ‘ancient’ works – works that have travelled tens of thousands of days and that are now ready to embark on a journey with the most recent works.
They recognise each other – thery imagined each other.
In the Pelle con resistenza (1968), incandescence brings energy, lapping up the phosphor and warming the sulphur of the Ciotola (1968), in which a magnet writes and draws with iron filings.
All can be reassembled and maybe there is time to do so. Maybe we just need to think that time belongs to art and that art dictates the time of hope…
Won’t the canoe be missing? …will L’Internazionale be missing?
The journey can go on.’
Gilberto Zorio, July 2015
