The first edition of ALA Art Prize is addressed to visual artists working in Campania who are invited to present an unpublished art project, with no technical constraints but compatible with the spaces of ALA headquarters and in line with the values of awareness, leadership and anticipation that have always distinguished the Company.

UP is the title of the work that the artist Mariangela Levita conceived for the first edition of ALA Art Prize. Thirty-four square canvases, a perfect shape already present in architecture, write the word “UP” on the wall opposite the monumental staircase of the Mediterranean Theatre.

With its shiny colours and essential geometry, the artwork pushes the boundary between the real world and the world of representation propagating into space.
Its thickness integrates anatomically into the wall without attacking it, but establishing a connection with it and inviting the viewer to observe the work from different perspectives. According to Levita, the connection to architecture has always been one of the founding moments of her research. These traces are also present in 2021 ALA Art Prize’s awarded work: through line, shape and colour, UP aims – conceptually and formally – at bridging the gap between historical architecture and pictorial visual language, rendering a new vision of space.

Levita’s UP translates a message of restart into a language midway between painting and installation, inviting to keep up one’s gaze and spirits.
In such a hard time in history, immersed as we are in a huge amount of information, in a never-ending and dissonant flow of voices, opinions and data, UP stands as a foothold, a syllable of lightness, an invitation to joy.