'Under the Sign of San Gennaro/ Strategies of the Gaze'

Il San Gennaro Day Award, Directed by Gianni Simioli, now in its ninth edition, is enriched with numerous cultural events aimed at paying homage San Gennaro ed Enrico Caruso, in the centenary year of his death.

One of the highlights of the calendar is the exhibition “Under the sign of San Gennaro / Strategies of the gaze”, curated by Loredana Troise and produced, for San Gennaro Day, by Jesce Sole. The installation project is curated by Diana Auricchio. Photos and videos by Luciano Filangieri.

"Under the sign of San Gennaro / Strategies of the gaze” is not only the title of the exhibition but also the sign of a reflective horizon to enter San Domenico Maggiore and travel, along the prestigious corridor of San Tommaso, an eclectic aesthetic scenario composed of 20 works by 20 well-known artists of the Neapolitan context dedicated to the patron saint of Naples, one of the most famous figures of Christian hagiography, historically an object of worship and living folklore supported by a relationship of faith and love unique in the world, which has lasted uninterruptedly for about sixteen centuries and constitutes a rare testimony to the intense and heartfelt religiosity of a people.

In this orbit, the works of the artists on display become opportunities for networks of ideal relationships redefined, from time to time, on the changing plot of their mutual becoming. Many are the motifs from one artist to another, to yet another. From painting to photography, from sculpture to poetry, from installation to NFT (non-fungible token): each work according to its own rhythms occupies its space in close and reciprocal harmony.

Through unexpected and sensitively calibrated counterpoints, the elusive measure of the bond between San Gennaro and Naples is told in its pungent forms of meaning, in an exclusive and subjective dimension. Metaphorical hand-to-hand combat on multiple points of view, the landscape of the exhibition shatters every representative stereotype in an unprecedented, broad fresco examined by the perspective lens of that verum et factum reciprocantur seu convertuntur that places the rule of thought in perceiving the principle of things and in conceiving them through cautious pushes and acts of healthy reluctance, as a creative act of the unconscious and of language.

Between artifice and nature – sacred and profane, the spectator is invited to play a meditative game between traditional iconographic models and contemporary visions, for a new and unprecedented convivial intimacy made of clues, traces and visual alternations that, significantly impacting the value and “exportability” of San Gennaro, manages to capture the nature of a city, always keeping the cultural dialogue alive.