Galleria Andrea Ingenito Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the exhibition of the artist Santlo De Luca entitled “Settimo:Non Rubare” (seventh: do not steal) which will be held at the headquarters in Via Santa Maria Cappella Vecchia, in Napoli, October 24th – December 14th, 2024.
The exhibition was born in collaboration with the artist and the Santolo De Luca Archive curated by Alice Rubbini. The Gallery will feature a particular selection of over thirty works, exclusive elements of the artist’s historical and stylistic research, as well as linguistics.
The key work of the exhibition, which contains concepts and particular interpretative suggestions, is entitled precisely “Non Rubare”(don’t steal), an incisive moral imperative that distinguishes the seventh Jewish/Catholic commandment, a warning of surprising relevance that crosses time and every culture.
The message of De Luca’s work is not only literal – do not steal other people’s property – but is a metaphor for making it, for succeeding with one’s own means, with respect for others and for oneself.
Santolo De Luca’s expressive research began in the mid-80s, immediately after his academic studies, to reach his affirmation in Italian and international contemporary painting in the 90s, and then push on to the present day through the subtle and penetrating irony that distinguishes him, the formal attention to detail, the exclusive creation of volume and three-dimensionality, the intense light and the decisive colorism, which continue to be a strong and essential part of his style. The artist, consistent and unique in his expressive method, on this occasion places us in front of his personal and seductive pictorial conceptualism, which in the 90s was identified in “Medialism” (Gabriele Perretta, Politi Editore, Milan 1993), an Italian artistic movement – and historically the last, it should be remembered –, formed by two significant components: analytical medialism, with Maurizio Cattelan among others, and pictorial medialism, in which Santolo De Luca himself emerged «…not by chance placed at the head of a group of artists defined as ‘medialists’» (L’Arte Contemporanea, Renato Barilli, Feltrinelli 2005).
In De Luca’s iconography, the ‘tube of paint’ appears for the first time in 1998, in the personal exhibition “Spirit and Matter”, held at the Annina Nosei gallery in New York. The message written with the contortion of the pigment arrives later, through various evolutions, to reach the color that defines the color itself, and then beyond, to lead the reflection to a painted word revealed by its title.
The concept is not only figuration in De Luca: the title is a whole, it is the door that opens onto the sagacious imagination, it is the energy that moves his world, it is input, intellectual and emotional source. And the color, is color that denies itself to the image, but does not give up coloring itself … painting itself … the nuances are infinite, like the references and word games, the verbal and figurative assonances, the semantic ambiguity, take shape and volume, make dimension and voice.
Santolo De Luca’s pictorial path is also well defined in the artist’s texts published in the column dedicated to him by AARTIC Magazine (from chapter 1 to 9 currently), in “La paura fa ’90… ancora”(fear is ’90…Yet), a long reflection in progress that outlines his work and the numerous exhibitions that dot his long career, through the cultural, economic and historical events, which began in the enthusiasm of the 90s and have evolved over the last thirty years.
For Santolo De Luca, this exhibition in the Andrea Ingenito Gallery in Napoli is one of the exceptional occasions in which the artist reopens the dialogue with his city, with its wonders and its contradictions, with its vibrant cultural and popular energy, unique in every one of its manifestations.
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