Scafati – A journey through the identity, memory, and contradictions of our time, told through the powerful and deeply evocative language of contemporary art. This is the heart of "IO SONO IO – Alfonso Sacco 2015/2025," the solo exhibition by master Alfonso Sacco, opening Saturday, March 28th at 7:00 PM in Scafati, at Via Nazionale 327, in the renovated spaces of the Galleria Arte Barbato.
The exhibition showcases some of the most significant works created by the award-winning Vesuvian artist in the decade between 2015 and 2025, offering the public a privileged glimpse into a particularly fertile period in his production. This period marks the master's full artistic maturity and is distinguished by an original, intense, and immediately recognizable expressive language.
It is no coincidence that the great art critic Gillo Dorfles emphasized: “His works allow us to identify the artist at first glance”, highlighting the strong recognisability and coherence of his research.
Throughout his career, Alfonso Sacco has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, in Italy and abroad, consolidating an increasingly significant presence in the contemporary art scene.
His recent participation in the international exhibition “Disquiet vs Harmony”, hosted in Los Angeles, further confirmed the ability of his art to dialogue with different cultural contexts and with an international audience.
A multifaceted artist and tireless experimenter, Sacco places textiles at the center of his poetics. These materials become expressive and symbolic matter, transforming into signs capable of evoking memory, identity, and human experience.
Dorfles further observes: “Look at a knotted handkerchief, or a series of knots in leather or string, ropes and his fingerprints and everything leads to Alfonso Sacco.”
His works often arise from the urgency to narrate and denounce the tensions of the contemporary world—from social inequalities to the individual's disorientation in a globalized society—but at the same time they are imbued with great hope.
The intense chromatic ranges that characterize his works convey, in fact, a gaze that, while aware of the fragility of the present, continues to believe in the strength of humanity, in memory and in traditions.
The vitality of his research is also underscored by the judgment of renowned art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, who stated: "What is striking about this artist is his desire to experiment and capitalize on the legacy of various avant-garde movements, which led him to create various pictorial cycles; most recently the 'Impronte' series, which, along with the 'Nodi' series, are designed to denounce and not forget memories of life."
The exhibition's title, "I AM ME," presents itself as a veritable manifesto of identity. In an age that tends to flatten differences and standardize consciousness, Sacco asserts the need to assert one's individuality and not give up the constant search for self.
Art thus becomes a space of freedom, awareness, and cultural resistance, a place where individuals can reaffirm their voice and their story.
“With his poetics and his language and the use of various materials and color, he creates his work that affirms the value of the SELF against that of the WE, putting aside trivial things in the service of fantasy, imagination and memory to travel from the twentieth century to the next, perhaps driven by a completely new wind.” - remark the famous art critics LuCa (Luigi Castellano Gruppo 58) and ABO (Achille Bonito Oliva).
INFO:
I AM ME – Alfonso Sacco 2015/2025
Vernissage: March 28, 7:00 PM
Barbato Art Gallery
National Street 327 – Scafati (SA)
galleriaartebarbato.it
Contact: info@galleriaartebarbato.it – +39 328 392 4202
Free admission
It seems like a curious and interesting event, but the exhibition doesn't explain everything to me: the works (which should be more contextualized) seem to speak for themselves but there is a lack of historical context and the lighting is poorly managed, the setting is too dark, the signage is confusing and the opening hours are not well specified, GalleriaArteBarbato seems ok but the inauguration on March 28th is not explained well.