“Nel corpo dell’Arte” Marca – Museo delle Arti di Catanzaro, Ottobre

Sergio Abramo President of the Province of Catanzaro
Rocco Guglielmo President of the Fondazione Rocco Guglielmo have the pleasure of inviting you to the opening of the exhibition

GAETANO ZAMPOGNA
NEL CORPO DELL‘ARTE
curated by Teodolinda Coltellaro and Giorgio de Finis

Opening Saturday, September 28, at 6:30 p.m.

Press Conference in the Museum’s Panoramic Room

From September 28, 2019, to November 22, 2019, the exhibition spaces of the MARCA museum will host a retrospective of Gaetano Zampogna, promoted by the Provincial Administration of Catanzaro and the Fondazione Rocco Guglielmo. The exhibition, curated by Teodolinda Coltellaro and Giorgio de Finis and entitled ”Nel corpo dell‘Arte ”, will present more than 30 paintings, some large-scale, selected from among the most significant of his substantial body of work, through which the artist will present an evolutionary journey through his intense creative path, stretching from the 1980s to today. The exhibition itinerary will, in fact, offer a view of the different phases of the artist’s research, making it possible to reconstruct the linguistic substance of his work. It will begin with works made with Artmedia: acts of plunder and appropriation of social reality, which also bring into play emblematic moments of twentieth-century art, with which Zampogna places himself within the field of inquiry of conceptual appropriationism; it will continue with works in which the precise interpretation of reality becomes an act of creative manipulation that allows the artist to unmask the invasive and pervasive power of the media in everyday life and in which the media message becomes the subject of analysis with strong ethical significance, as in those that refer to the various Gratta e vinci lotteries, Isola del tesoro, Giocagiò, and Carte fortunate, through which the artist unfolds his refined expressive score. The museum spaces of MARCA will mark the chronological development of the work. It will offer the attentive viewer a fertile dimension of knowledge capable of conveying, – as Teodolinda Coltellaro explains in her critical text – “(…) the vital essence of the social as it presents itself in the immediacy of its making, almost as a communicative disturbance like the media, whose language repeats its existential mirroring in an obsessive redundancy.” Emphasizing that – “In its linguistic evolution, Zampogna’s work acquires a capacity for social analysis, a critical identity that ultimately become its stylistic hallmark. In his works, the signs of art, as bearers of their own substantial truth that underlies the real (…), succeed in demystifying the system of media signs through creative hybridizations that dismantle its negative potential. The work becomes a place of analysis, but also of storytelling, of narratives that dig into objective reality, dismantling and reassembling it according to ethical rules that emerge from the restless expanses of his inner world. (…) The first “macellerie” presage an extraordinary process of synthesis carried out in the depths of his own self, into which the social self flows. He lives fully in his own time, of which he is a disenchanted witness, capable of grasping, with his creative syntax, the discrepancies within the social body, down to the flesh. (…) With the “macellerie,” Zampogna brings the body of art, the truth of the work, onto the stage. (…) And the body becomes flesh and offers itself as a possibility of salvation.”

Giorgio de Finis, in his contribution to the catalogue, adds: “(…) Colors and brushes are the tools chosen by Gaetano Zampogna to show us a way out, a possibility of salvation, reminding us that the daily practice of making something non-utilitarian, disinterested, “useless,” free, can be the key to fighting the dehumanizing forces that besiege us. As long as there is art, there is hope.”
For the occasion, a bilingual catalogue (Italian/English) has been produced, published by Silvana Editoriale in the “I Quaderni del Marca” series, containing critical texts by Teodolinda Coltellaro and Giorgio de Finis and biobibliographical material on the artist.

GAETANO ZAMPOGNA
NEL CORPO DELL‘ARTE
Catanzaro, MARCA Museum (via Alessandro Turco, 63)
September 28 – November 22, 2019
curated by Teodolinda Coltellaro and Giorgio de Finis
Opening Saturday, September 21, at 6:30 p.m.
Press conference in the Museum’s Panoramic Room
Hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 9:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.; 3:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Closed Mondays
Admission: full price: €4.00; reduced: €3.00
Catalogue published by Silvana Editoriale
For information:
Tel. 0961.746797; info@museomarca.com | www.museomarca.info