Galleria Umberto Di Marino is pleased to present the last solo show by Eugenio Tibaldi entitled Bubo, on Friday 11th October 2013.

The exhibition marks the evolution of research which Tibaldi has carried out for many years now on the relationship between crime, the economy and aesthetics in the hinterland of Naples. Over time, this has led the artist to draw interesting parallels between Naples and other cities in the world where he has set up a series of participatory projects linked to the social dynamics of the local area, such as Tabula Rasa for Manifesta 7 in Bolzano, My personal bridge on the Galata Bridge in Istanbul, Transit in Thessaloniki or Play Bucharest in Bucharest. With his attentive but silent gaze, the artist captures the distinctive features of peripheral neighbourhoods which are linked to the idea of social hardship and decay but gradually form their own identity. They are marked as zones containing new centres, “a sort of increasingly visible ‘outside’” of places which, compared to static, unchanging cities, are in a constant state of metamorphosis, becoming the setting for varied human events.

The itinerary of the exhibition is a return journey through outskirts which can be defined as mental places, beginning from a series of codes, applied to everyday objects. The exhibition gives back a sort of aesthetic dignity to these places, analysing their special condition and hinting at further keys to interpretation - to be sought in the artist’s background - in an unusual poetics of travel. By opening up new horizons, this poetics creates intersecting relations and inevitable contaminations which pave the way for possible future developments.

In the works Popup Licola, painting becomes sculpture. Through a novel and original perspective, with a constructive tension that consolidates the relationship with space, Tibaldi offers frames of precarious moments of life in the everlasting antithesis between real life and comedy, between the splendour of nature and the havoc wrought by mankind. By varying its modus operandi, the artistic quest also extends into neighbourhoods in the outlying areas of Rome which were not explored by the artist who, on this occasion, avoided direct contact with reality and chose these places as a field of research during his residency at the American Academy. Large maps created using satellite images almost turn into an exercise in pure painting which records places that have been broken down into elemental units, emptied of their historical and social significance, in an intentional decision to avoid grasping the profound signs, the true identity of things.

The boundary between the everyday object and the artist’s vision tends to blur and the other works in the exhibition, in an ideal mixture between personal experience and the assimilation of the dynamics of urban peripheries, become a pretext for Tibaldi to reflect on the uncontrolled informal growth of these places. By ignoring the ordinary principles of expansion, this unfettered expansion has given rise to a dense network of architectural bubo – imposing residential centres which are seemingly autonomous of the city. This is because, like bubo marginal excrescences of converging areas of matter that needs to be expelled, these places are attached to the main body and, by feeding on the same lifeblood, alter its original appearance.

Umberto Di Marino Gallery
Via Alabardieri, 1
Naples 80121 Italy
Ph. +39 081 0609318
umberto.dimarino@fastwebnet.it
www.galleriaumbertodimarino.com

Opening hours
Monday - Saturday 3pm - 8pm
Morning by appointment

Related images

  1. Eugenio Tibaldi, Bubo 03, 2013, acquerello su carta, cm 150 x 200, Foto: Danilo Donzelli, Courtesy Galleria Umberto Di Marino, Napoli, Italy
  2. Eugenio Tibaldi, Bubo 02, 2013, acquerello su carta, cm 130 x 230, Foto: Danilo Donzelli, Courtesy Galleria Umberto Di Marino, Napoli, Italy
  3. Eugenio Tibaldi, Bubo 01, 2013, acquerello su carta, cm 150 x 200, Foto: Danilo Donzelli, Courtesy Galleria Umberto Di Marino, Napoli, Italy
  4. Eugenio Tibaldi, Sea Side 2, 2012, acrilico su carta, cm 207 x 150 x 5, 9 stampe fotografiche, cm 18 x 24 cad., Courtesy Galleria Umberto Di Marino, Napoli, Italy
  5. Eugenio Tibaldi, School of Fine Arts, Open Studios presso l'American Academy in Rome, 2013, Roma
  6. Eugenio Tibaldi, Sea Side 3, 2012, acrilico su carta, cm 200 x 150 x 5, 9 stampe fotografiche, cm 18 x 24 cad., Courtesy Galleria Umberto Di Marino, Napoli, Italy