Museo Arcos Benevento - Exhibition 'Neighborhood' curated by Francesco Creta.
From September 16, the exhibition halls of the ARCOS Museum in Benevento will host the exhibition “Neighborhood” promoted by the Province of Benevento with the support of Sannio Europa and the Matronato della Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee. The exhibition, in bringing together the artists of Via Varco, in times like those we live in of “social distancing”, tells us about an experience of neighborhood art.
Eugenio Giliberti, Umberto Manzo, Perino & Vele, Lucio and Peppe Perone, with works that are somehow site and topic specific, reinterpret and conquer the spaces of Arcos.
The theme of neighborhood, political or non-political, is entrusted in some ways to a treatment that is anything but direct. Probably, in a complex situation like the one we are living, any revelation would have risked compromising any possibility of action.
On display, open to the public until January 7, 2023, the papier-mâché sculpture-installations (Perino & Vele), iron, fiberglass, PVC and IND paint (Lucio and Peppe Perone), paintings with layers of paper (Manzo), “cadastral” paintings (Giliberti) dialogue with the spaces as if they were five solo exhibitions capable of highlighting the character and diversity of artists who, although not a group, work in studios that all overlook the same neighborhood.
Marco Tonelli in 2017, on the occasion of the exhibition that the same artists held at the Villino del Balzo in San Martino Valle Caudina wrote that “In some ways Via Varco is the tip of the iceberg, a concentration of forces that is an integral part of a cultural ecology of the Italian territory.
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Even if there does not seem to be any sharing of styles, materials and forms in the works, nor of registry (the birth dates of their biographies go from 1954 to 1975), it would be equally unproductive to make a discussion that considers the artists of Via Varco as worlds separate from each other. If there is no aesthetic that represents Via Varco, the co-presence of these artists in a small portion of territory, decentralized with respect to the usual routes of the contemporary but central to its vitality and originality, is a symptom of something real and already projected into the future”: it is Neighborhood.
Neighborhood is a word that evokes encounters, socializing, and discussion. The journey of these five artists, while not defined by a single style, has led to the creation of an artistic Koinè, a language of encounter that speaks of memory and roots, countering the extreme speed of society with a return to natural rhythms.
For this exhibition, Arcos replaces the Via Varco studios as the venue for the social interaction that has characterized these artists' experience over the past 10 years. However, it opens up different types of discussion, particularly the relationship between a highly distinctive space like the Benevento museum and artists with a strong identity, creating the suggestion of a dialogue between the tuff of the exhibition spaces and the works themselves.
Furthermore, another fundamental aspect for the conception of this exhibition is the possibility for Arcos to provide a dialogue between ancient and contemporary, given the presence within the spaces of the permanent exhibition dedicated to the cult of Isis.
Neighborhood becomes a meeting place, going beyond the ancient idea of a temple-museum to arrive at a model of a living space for discussion, an Agora not only for artists but also for visitors.
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