Curated by Alessandro Romanini
MANN National Archaeological Museum of Naples
8 June - 29 July 2018
Opening Friday, June 8, 2018 17:00
On 8 June 2018 the personal exhibition of Aron Demetz Autarchia opens at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. The works, realized following an installation project in dialogue with the museum collections, will be exhibited until 29 July 2018.
The South Tyrolean sculptor Aron Demetz (Vipiteno, 1972) has been conducting research for over twenty years as a bridge between ancient and contemporary. The sculptures, expressly realised on the occasion of this exhibition in various sizes and materials, constitute an installation complex that interacts with the classical and Egyptian works in MANN museum. In particular, the dynamic settings and postural of his sculptures are inspired by the Farnese and Egyptian collections of the Archaeological Museum of Naples. The artist's research has always focused on the centrality of the human figure as a vehicle for classical ideals such as formal purity and the ethical and archetypal contents of art. In his work, however, Demetz adds a contemporary experimentation in which the contribution made by the material used to the realisation of the work is clear.
The title of the exhibition "Autarchia" indicates that condition of self-sufficiency of the wise man who shuns the social conventions to pursue self-ruled laws in the direction of happiness. In the Demetz’ code of rules, the author of the work is not only the artist - with his planning ideas and the ethical and aesthetic contents to be impressed in the form - but also the material to which the creator directs his action. According to its organoleptic characteristics, each material indicates a specific executive process that the artist makes visible in some details left deliberately in an "unfinished" condition.
In the poetics of Demetz, the term “creativity” can be decomposed in the two words "creation", which implies a project and an idea, and "action", which is the obligatory step to transform an idea into a solid object. According to the artist, it is in this passage the fundamental autarchic moment that leads to knowledge: ideas need action to be realised, but these action can not be imposed from outside, they are the result of a dialogue between the artist (idea) and the material to be moulded (physicality) and this dialogue is called technique (knowledge). In order to realise his idea, the artist must necessarily place himself in the dimension of listening to the material he wants to mould. Only by sharing the authorial dimension with it, he will be able to achieve his goal (the physical representation of the idea).
Aron Demetz is considered one of the greatest Italian sculptors. In this exhibition, the artist has questioned both artistic and cultural roots of Western tradition. In a museum with important archaeological collections like those in the MANN, the risk was to confront the authorship of the "masterpiece", which moves the object from the user, and the temporal separation, which creates an insurmountable gap. The installation idea of he exhibition places Demetz’ sculptures as a basic unit for space calibration. Not recalling any reference to real subjects, his figures invite the spectator to identify himself with them, they are transmuted into empty spaces in which he can immerse himself in order to enjoy the space shaped by the artist. Through his sculptures, Demetz involves the spectator in an ideal dialogue with the works of the museum and at the same time emancipates him from the contemplative admiration aroused by the classical masterpiece.
The exhibition has been realised with the support and patronage of the Consiglio Regionale della Toscana and the Regione Trentino - Alto Adige and will be accompanied by a catalog published by Prestel.
Info:
www.arondemetz.it
MANN National Archaeological Museum of Naples
Naples, Piazza Museo 19
www.museoarcheologiconapoli.it
8 June - 29 July 2018
Open from Wednesday to Monday
From 9.00 to 19.30
Opening Friday, June 8, 2018 17:00
Press Office:
Pizzinini/Scolari
