AICA | Andrea Ingenito Contemporary Art gallery is pleased to announce the group exhibition entitled “Pompeii Project”, designed by Andrea Ingenito and curated by Serena Ribaudo, born from the need to revisit an archaeological site famous all over the world, highlighting its historical and universal background. The opening will take place on Sunday, May 3, at 11 a.m. in Massimiano 25, Milan.

Presented, as a national preview, during the fifth edition of MIA Milan Image Art Fair 2015, in its first exclusively photographic phase, the project now continues in its path of growth, going to incorporate varied and diverse artistic expressions. The protagonists will investigate, the memory of a place, its uniqueness, its innermost essence, each according to their very personal view and to their expressive language.

The ancient that meets the contemporary: Suzanne Moxhay and Barbara Nati’s visionary images tell us the timeless past of one of the most representative and still existing places of historic, cultural, anthropological interest. Shots in which the pragmatic elements of Pompeian reality, that we know well, are transposed into dreamlike, utopian, sometimes apocalyptic atmospheres and, therefore, unknown until now. A dual perspective is offered to our eyes by precious diptychs of the sicilian photographer Sandro Scalia. From the bottom up, from the blue sky to the sunny land, from wall coverings to pavements: glimpses enclosed in two different points of view, for a single overview, through a single glance.

The material aspect is manifested through the sculptural language of the sicilian artist Giacomo Rizzo. Giving voice to a methodology highly correlated with known events of Pompeii and that pervades much of his artistic work particularly dedicated to the archeology of nature, the sculptor creates and exhibits for the occasion a cast of rock.

Through the artistic route and the presence of these protagonists it will be highlighted once again the importance of an artistic excellence, already declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1997.

Therefore, this is the beginning of a journey, with the prospect of an increase of the valuable exhibition project’s development and dissemination, through national and international stops.

Text by Serena Ribaudo

The Pompeii Project was born from the need to revisit an archaeological site famous all over the world, highlighting its historical and universal background.

Through the artistic route and the presence of Photography’s protagonists it will be highlighted once again the importance of an artistic excellence, already declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1997.

The Project Pompeii is presented today in the first phase, exclusively, in its photographic uniqueness. Soon it is also expected to continue in its path of growth, going to incorporate varied and diverse artistic expressions: from sculpture to painting to video art.

In the prestigious setting of MIA Milan Image Art Fair 2015 the three photographers will investigate, each according to their very personal view, the memory of a place, its uniqueness, its innermost essence.

In Suzanne Moxhay’s photography there is a parallel specularity: Naples/Pompeii or Pompeii/Naples present themselves as the floodgates of a path animated by history until the present day. From the eschatological suspension of a Pompeii condemned by the cruelty of natural events to the destruction of itself, to today's Naples vilified by the blind sloth of men but desirous of a moral rebuilding. With close attention to detail the works of Suzanne Moxhay show glimpses of the contemporary in a hybrid and imaginative space: on the ancient walls of Pompeii the British photographer casually affix pieces of modernity in a hug between past and present that makes her photographic research extremely original.

The photographic work of Barbara Nati highlights the human re-construction of a site as an image of assemblages of things, places of memory, visionary metempsychosis. "Don't forget your history nor your destiny" is a phenomenology of cosmic influences and emotional archeology that Barbara Nati manages to evoke in her works. Her photographs are a summation of contemplation from the real and bold artifices. An original and surreal collage: layers that overlap and visual intersections that refer to other worlds and help to create a unique language, almost germinal.

In his diptychs Sandro Scalia cloaked in a veil of metaphysical suspension the Pompeian topoi. Scalia offers figurative puzzles playing with full/empty, lights/shadows, concave/convex, indoor/outdoor, curved/straight lines. The complex construction generates some effects of alienation and the eye of the observer is invited to an operation of a ideal re-creation and to the execution of a sentimental hermeneutic. Decomposing images through the slip of surfaces, syntactic rebus are grafted to a sense of conceptual and refined composition. However, the saturated and absolutely pure color gives back its essence of reality to this view.