Le Scalze – San Giuseppe a Pontecorvo Church
Curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto
10.05.21 – 30.05.2021
The San Giuseppe delle Scalze in Pontecorvo Church in Naples hosts an exhibition that includes two of the most interesting artists of the contemporary creative overview, Mateusz Choroski (Radomsko, 1987) and Namsal Siedlescki (Greenflield, 1986).
The exhibition, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto, is open to the audience from Sunday the 9th to Sunday the 30th of May 2021 and is promoted by the Agovino Collection, Naples.
After an initial meeting which took place on the occasion of the collective exhibition #VillaMedicimylove, Académie de France à Rome, Villa Medici, 2019, the exhibition creates for the first time an individual dialogue between two interpreters who are different in history, generation, and culture, associated by a common sensitiveness towards history, time and material. This orientation was made explicit by each of them in their own ways, naturally linked to their personal and professional life but able to present unexpected and sometimes surprising points of convergence. In fact, while Mateusz Choroski meditates on these issues through a variegated set of expressive methods (sculpture, video, performance…), Namsal Siedlescki relies above all on plastic language.
The exhibition is therefore outlined as a sort of virtual conversation on shared themes (albeit analyzed from different points of view) between Choroski and Siedlescki such as the sacred revisited according to one’s specific experience and often considered in relation to historical and social issues. This conversation takes the form of a single large installation designed for the baroque spaces of the Church of San Giuseppe delle Scalze, designed by Cosimo Fanzago in the XVII Century and composed of recent works many of which were conceived on this occasion. In particular, Choroski (whose personal debut at an Italian institution took place in 2019 at the Nicola Roscio Foundation – La Fondazione, Roma) elaborates his own original interpretation of Baroque poetics examining both the theme of light (as evidenced by the various luminous works created for the exhibition – Rood Screen 1-3, 2021 for instance – by recomposing and revitalizing, as usual in his practice, disused electrical equipment) and that of sculpture (the twisted columns of Bernini’s memory formed by superimposed Polish groszy represented by 1056.24/2, 2021 as an example.
Siedlescki instead continues his consideration on the dualism life/death and the various aspects through which it can be made explicit: the one of regeneration (the aluminum casting of a wineskin – a bottle of primordial water – placed on the dehydrated silhouette of a cactus- originally able to make up its own water reserve-), of sacrifice (the exchange of material that occurs between anode and cathode in the galvanic tank of Viandante, 2021), of memory (Limes, 2021: the ashes of a wolf solidified in the crystal), of ritual (Scalze, 2021: the zinc cast of the artist’s feet evokes the ends of the bronze St. Peter’s located in the Roman basilica of the same name touched by the faithful as a prayer).
Through the intervention of Choroski and Siedlescki the church ideally regenerates its original functions filling itself with an atmosphere full of spirituality and references to a renewed mystical and religious dimension.
Photo credits: Danilo Donzelli
The Agovino Collection, Naples wishes to thank the artists and all those who have made this project possible with their generous contribution, in particular: Francesca Blandino; Paolo Caravello; Eduardo Secci, Florence; Istituto Polacco, Rome; Ania Jagiello; Cecilia Lanzarini; Mauro Nicoletti; Magazzino, Rome; Martina Margioni; Davide Pellicciari; Sant’Alfonso B&B, Naples; Carlotta Spinelli. A special thanks goes to the Coordination Le scalze for the availability to use the space.