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GIULIA

PISCITELLI

Compianto sul Cristo morto

2023

Gold leaf printed on 100% cotton Photo Rag paper

86 x 100 cm

The work is the anastatic reproduction of a nautical map from the book The new, great and shining face of the sea (N.J. Vooght,1695) with application of gold leaf in the form of twelve halos.
The halos are transposed according to the scale pattern of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ, a work by the Master of Figline (c.1330) currently housed at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge.
The work is the result of a research process on the connection between the Earth’s surface and the sky, and between real proportion and divine proportion: the former is provided by the reduction scale of the geographical map, used as a support for the work, the latter by the transposition onto it of the halos of the Compianto sul Cristo morto, removing the human element.
The work triggers a journey in the viewer and is a medium for reducing distances:the horizontal distances between the places represented in the geographical map and the vertical distances, between the Earth and the sky.

Giulia Piscitelli,

Compianto sul Cristo morto

2020
Installation view
© Maurizio Esposito

Giulia Piscitelli,

Compianto sul Cristo morto

2020
Installation view
© Amedeo Benestante

Giulia Piscitelli,

Compianto sul Cristo morto

EUGENIO VIOLA X

GIULIA PISCITELLI

Giulia Piscitelli‘s project (Naples, 1965) identifies precarious strategies to recover emotions, to perceive and accept frailty, diversity and the ephemeral, to reconsider minimal things and gestures, to appreciate what is peripheral, marginal, what at first sight may seem irrelevant but, if observed carefully, can lead to an alternative interpretation of the reality around us. The realization process is core to Piscitelli’s work, who uses heterogeneous media such as videos, photography, installation painting, collage and ready-mades in her art practice. A pupil of Giuseppe Desiato, the artist loves to define herself as the “daughter of Fluxus”, a poetic declaration that emphasizes the link between the artistic action and the everyday environment, aimed at understanding life as a retrievable aesthetic phenomenon.

Compianto sul Cristo morto (2020) belongs to the Maps series (2016 – in progress), in which Piscitelli intervenes on geographical maps from different ages, on which -using the traditional gold leaf technique- she transposes the scaled halos of characters borrowed from a number of masterpieces of ancient art, who are represented by the artist without a body, by abstraction, in other words in their “golden state”, that nevertheless replicates the compositional scheme of the original.

In this work, Piscitelli operates on a replica of an ancient nautical chart of the Gulf of Naples, on which she reproduces twelve scaled halos from the composition of a work by the Master of Figline (ca. 1330), the Compianto sul Cristo morto. This project is the result of research on the connection between the earth’s surface and the sky, and between real proportion and symbolic proportion: the former is provided by the reduction scale of the geographical map used as support for the work, the latter by the transposition of the halos, iconographic attributes common to various ancient religions as well as classical art, the use of which is recurrent in Christian iconography and therefore immediately recognizable by the viewer, who is therefore forced into an alienating space-time slip even more than a sense shift.

Giulia Piscitelli was born in Naples in 1965 where she lives and works.
In 1988 she met Al Hansen with whom she collaborated until 1994, and from 1992 to 1994 she was one of the promoters of the multimedia project Studio Aperto (Naples). Since 2006, she is represented by Galleria Fonti in Naples, where she presented five solo exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include: Anime, curated by Rita Selvaggio, Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Val D’Arno (2019), Nella Società, in Gesellschaft, curated by Fanni Fetzer, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne (2019), Wide Rule, Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles (2015), Intermedium, Museo MADRE, Naples (2013), Contested Zone, CUBITT Gallery, London (2011), Rischi Minori, curated by Stefano Chiodi, Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (2011), Beige, Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples (2010), Ballhaus, curated by Salvatore Lacagnina, RISO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Palermo (2008). Her work is included in Refuge, Lagos Biennial 2024.
Group exhibitions include: Terrore, Luoghi di Colonialismo e Fascismo, curated by Kathryn Weir, MADRE Museum, Naples (2022), documenta 14, curated by Adam Szymczyk, Athens (2017), 16th Quadriennale d’arte, Rome (2016), 54th Venice Biennale, curated by Bice Curiger, (2011), When things cast no shadow – 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, curated by Adam Szymczyk and Elena Filipovic (2008).

October 2024