Appointment on May 30th at the Dadart Gallery in Salerno with Jacopo Mandich and Stefano De Matteis.
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The cycle of cultural events continues at the Dadart Gallery of Contemporary Art in Salerno (Lungomare Cristoforo Colombo 128 A), founded by Daniela Diodato with the artistic direction of Emanuele Forte. The next meeting, scheduled for Friday 30 May 2025 at 19.30:XNUMX pm, is entitled *MIRABILIA. Are we ready to really get to know each other? and brings art and anthropology into dialogue at the heart of the “Dialoghi d'Arte” project, curated by the journalist and writer Anna Marchitelli.
Jackal Project: when sculpture becomes a mirror of interiority
The protagonist of the event will be the artist Jacopo Mandich with the installation *Jackal Project*, a visual and sensorial exploration of human discomfort. The work takes shape through slender and grotesque creatures that, with their spectral luminosity, populate the spaces of the Gallery like evanescent presences. Inspired by canine figures, these sculptures tell the contrast between appearance and substance, form and perception, body and soul.
Through a “paradoxical transparency”, Mandich opens a passage to access what is usually hidden: the inner fragilities, repressed and hindered by contemporary society. A work that invites the viewer to recognize and welcome their own anxieties.
The Art of Jacopo Mandich: Between Matter and Metaphor
Born in 1979, Jacopo Mandich is a Roman sculptor whose artistic research is based on the interaction between matter and sensation. His works generate visual and tactile short circuits: impossible hybridizations, subverted logics, harmonious contrasts that stimulate the imagination and destabilize certainties. After graduating in Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 2005, he participated in international exhibitions and biennials, including the Ural Biennial in Russia, becoming the first Italian artist invited to the event.
His visual language develops in a relational dimension between matter and space, giving life to phenomena that evoke both terrestrial and alien realities.
The Lobster Dilemma: Vulnerability as Strength
The installation will be accompanied by the intervention of anthropologist and essayist Stefano De Matteis, who will present his latest book Il dilemma dell'aragosta (Meltemi). The work is inspired by the particular condition of the lobster, which is born without protection and develops an exoskeleton that, over time, from a defense turns into a prison. To survive, the lobster is forced to free itself, expose itself, regenerate.
A powerful metaphor, through which De Matteis proposes an anthropological reading of current events: stop hiding behind obsolete certainties and embrace vulnerability as a lever for personal and collective change. A lucid reflection on the "strength of fragility".
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# **Art and thought: a necessary dialogue**
The common thread that links Mandich's work and De Matteis's thought is the theme of dissonance between external shell and interiority: what appears and what we really are, in a society that rewards image and represses essence. The framework is the awareness that art itself - as argued by anthropologist Edmund Leach, quoted by De Matteis - can offer tools to understand the complexity of the present: "To solve the problems of modernity, we should talk to artists and poets, rather than university professors."
The protagonists: two voices compared
Jacopo Mandich boasts a solid education in the Academies of Fine Arts of Rome, Urbino and Turin. He has participated in international projects and his works have been exhibited in important solo and group exhibitions. In 2019 he took part in the project #Atelier4 – Macro Asilo, curated by Giorgio de Finis at the Macro Museum in Rome.
Stefano De Matteis, professor at the University of Roma Tre and the Pontifical Gregorian University, is one of the main Italian scholars of performance anthropology. He edited the Italian edition of the works of Victor Turner and those of Ernesto de Martino, and collaborates with Radio Rai 3 and the Sunday edition of “Sole 24 Ore”.
Article published on May 29, 2025 - 13:00 pm
