Nello Petrucci

Il Canto di Circe

Curated by Marina Guida

May 23rd – June 28th 2020

Monumental complex of San Domenico Maggiore

Library room

Naples

The Library Hall of the Monumental Complex of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples houses the site-specific installation by the artist Nello Petrucci entitled "Il Canto di Circe" by Marina Guida. The installation project designed specifically for this occasion, is promoted by the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Municipality of Naples in collaboration with Contemply as part of the May of Monuments 2020 event and presents three works of great form, a triptych on board, tribute at the thought of the Nola philosopher Giordano Bruno.

It is no coincidence that the room of the Library of the Monumental Complex of San Domenico Maggiore was chosen by the artist, a place where the young philosopher had the opportunity to form his critical and independent thinking, also through the reading of prohibited texts of which this library it was provided.Nor is the day chosen for the inauguration, that 23 May when Giordano Bruno was arrested in Venice and transferred to the prisons of the Sant 'Uffizio di San Domenico di Castello (Venice), not by chance. In fact, the works of the triptych recount precisely that event in three moments: the day of non-abjuration, censorship and arrest.

In Petrucci's three works - made in a mixed technique by fusing decollage / collage, painting, computer graphics, photography and four-color printing - the powerful icon of the philosopher emerges on the fragments of torn posters that symbolically represent false beliefs, proclamations and fake certainties of the globalized and massified era. The inspiration for this work was taken from the book "Canto di Circe" that the philosopher Giordano Bruno published in Paris 1582. In the fourth, fifth and sixth "question" of the book "First Dialogue", the philosopher describes the true nature of certain beings, human in appearance but feral in substance and, referring to the species of men who have become monkeys again, makes Circe declare: "These animals - devoid of any use in serious matters - made themselves appreciated by the tycoons by flattering them, teaching and acting the part of the parasites: even now, since they cannot carry weights with donkeys, march on the ground together with horses, plow with oxen, feed on corpses with pigs, they serve only to make people laugh. " Circe describes monkey men, courtiers of power, opponents of free thought. The artist Nello Petrucci takes the image of the monkey - in this case it is the personification of censorship, which blocks the freedom of thought and expression - and constructs the scene with two antithetical figures: the freedom of thought personified by Giordano Bruno and the censures that all the powers established, since the dawn of time, exercise on the former, trying to limit and suppress it in all its forms.

Nello Petrucci after 2018 - the year of his artistic residence at the 3World Trade Center, where he created the monumental The Essence of Lightness - he began to formulate a visual thought that blends the stylistic elements and iconographic codes derived from the history of art of the centuries last, with the formal solutions typical of street-art, in which a complex mix of persistences and quotations, references and parallels, form a visual universe that gives life to images straddling the ancient and the contemporary, offering multiple semantic levels. Canto di Circe can be considered a work of street art set up in a public place and represents a tribute to free thought and an invitation to go symbolically beyond the doxa of all dictatorial forms of power, manifest or occult and always pursue veritas , as the philosopher Giordano Bruno taught us, with obstinacy and courage.

The work Il Canto di Circe will be available from 23 May online on the Facebook page of the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Municipality of Naples through a video created by the artist and subsequently the Library will be open to the public with dates and times that will be made always known through the Facebook page of the Department.

Here you can view and / or download the video

Nello Petrucci (Castellammare di Stabia, 1981) lives in Pompeii and is an Italian artist and filmmaker, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples. An omnivorous curiosity, and a multifaceted talent, have generated the unmistakable style of his "Decollage"; so much so that critics have coined a new term, "Pop Kinetics", to define his art. One of his works, The essence of lightness is permanently exhibited on the 45th floor of the 3rd World Trade Center in New York; the only Italian invited to exhibit, together with the best street artists in the world. Also in New York, he exhibited twice at the Agorà Gallery, and then in Rome at the American Embassy in Rome with Over the Sky, a series of paintings dedicated to September 11th. On the cinematographic side, in addition to playing various roles as an actor, including a small part in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, he shot a short film Lost Love (2019) on the theme of racism and signs the direction of the video clip Remove the frame on the theme of homosexuality in the Pompeii Archaeological Park. In 2019 he founded the film production company Satyr M.B. production.

Exhibition card

Promoted by            Assessorato alla Cultura e al Turismo del Comune di Napoli

Title                           Il Canto di Circe

Author                       Nello Petrucci

Curated by                Marina Guida             

Where                       Complesso Monumentale S. Domenico Maggiore - Napoli 

When                        23rd May – June 28th 2020

https://www.facebook.com/assessoratoallaculturaealturismodelcomunedinapoli/

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