Francesco Gallo Mazzeo
Art critic
Napoli/Eden. It’s an idea, it’s a specific one, it’s a project. The space is the historical one, actual, unspeakably fascinating, and also complex, of the center of Naples, fundamental pivot of the metropolis, of myth and reality, of the myth that tends to become a concrete object and of the reality that turns into drama, in tragedy but also in a sublime seduction and in an endless contemplation, among stones, smells and tastes. The idea and project for this edition of Napoli/Eden is that of dissemination in squares, streets, alleys and places of splendor, made with ordinary tools in materials and technique, brought to artistic vitality and removed from the destiny of death in a landfill or warehouse. It is an invention of an artistry, made of aluminum and other manipulated materials, transformed into works of art, colored, illuminated, that challenge architecture, in an idea of contemporary baroque, in its essentiality, with no center and no suburbs, but a great and widespread centrality, which tends to abolish the real concept of periphery, in a modernity that goes beyond the concept of perspective and turns it into a great theatricality, which tends to indicate a path in its defined chronology of hope in which what is today is a stage, of an itinerary of joy and happiness. It is the way in which the utopia of art translates its non-place, that in fantasy, in reality, in material, or in what does not serve a specific need, but teaches the beauty of the gesture, of the gift, in a good city for everyone and not a home for anyone, so it is thought that this “experiment” can and should be extended to the thousand places of Naples that are beyond the historic center and are waiting, in the short term, to pass from the aridity in which they were conceived and desired, in a abysmally way into places of identity, into places of devotion to beauty. This is why we also think of moments of speech, debate, inquiry, because public art is not, must not be an aristocratic, self-referential imposition, but a poem, a dialogue. Annalaura di Luggo, is the designating and designated architect of this Christmas observation that does not want to be drowned in rhetoric, but is proposed as a litmus test that may put together the present-past, the present-present, the present-future, because who dominates must be life, faith, hope that is a way to remain in tradition or classicism, with experimentation, with innovation, otherwise only folkloristic traditionalism and mortuary classicism will resist. In the city of San Gennaro, of Pulcinella, of Raimondo di Sangro, of Benedetto Croce, you must be able to see far and hear from a close distance, not to stumble and not to err in vain. This is why the emblem of Annalaura di Luggo is an eye, an iris, a pupil, a real view.