Dal lato dell’immaginario
Luigi Manciocco
Dal lato dell’immaginario
Cured by Alessandra Santin
April, 2 – June, 30, 2023
In the contemporary uncertain fluidity, in the fragility of human reality today more than ever unstable and distracted, the perfect place from which to start is the time of the contemporary imagination. “Dal lato dell’immaginario” [“From the imagination side”] is the title and the starting point of Luigi Manciocco’s personal exhibition: a reflection journey where neither savings or shortcuts are planned and which winds along a strongly intensive path, a kind of “mystical ritual space” divided into three sections, which at the end leads to an emersion of hope and rebirth, with a beneficial aesthetic and at the same time emotive effect.
The artist is often defined as an “urban primitive” as he finds his research in the highest popular culture, in the hagiographic visual aspects, in the embodied words of the ancient texts orally transmitted and written in later periods.
The exhibition starts from a ritual of the archaic Rome: the “Suggrundaria”. A sculpture composed by steel gutters and aluminium dolls recalling a long time ago wherein, when a less than forty days old child died, he (or she) was buried in the family home, inside the gutter, under the roof. This is a painful reflection which is reflected in our society, the unborn children society.
The works dedicated to Saint Rita da Cascia, the Saint of impossible causes, whose story has fascinated Manciocco, are inspired by popular religiosity. These works recall particular moments of the Saint hagiography: “Sciame” is a Corian black disc from which golden bee swarms are released, with reference to the protection of her cradle. While the “Santa” installation, formed by a Corian white disc from which a red drop of blood slowly flows (a blood-coloured liquid), recalls the wound on the Saint’s forehead, always alive, caused by the thorn of Jesus’ Crown.
With the work “Lacrima” Manciocco takes us once more far away in time, when the tears for the mourning were, above all in the Mediterranean culture, ritual and comforting. Manciocco slows down the time in an installation composed by a video and by a small sculpture realized with ice: a slowly melting tear.