A new exhibition entitled “Fatiche/Ferite” by Luigi Pagano can be visited at the Museum from June 30th . The artist deals with one of the most loved sculptures in the National Archeological Museum of Naples, Heracles Farnese, a powerful and fragmented figure, which drives the eye to pursue marble veins and movements.
Differently from the previous Pagano who expresses himself through a very copious post-ancient iconography based on the concept of entirety, the artist fragments the statue to consider the single parts, as perhaps he had never made before. He decomposes the ancient inspiring figure into its elements, he abstracts it and does not reassemble it in any work of this exhibition of big paintings (Cinto, Idra and Leone) and small paintings (the polyptych Lacerti and the Indian ink paintings evocative of the twelve labours in very quick hints).
Pagano fragments the figure of Heracles to the point that he roughly draws the protagonist – or better its parts – close to the hardly recognizable traces of the mythical stories, projecting the present physical reality in the dimension of memory and story of his background. After partially reducing the monumentality of the statue and concealing its value of immortal ikon, Pagano gives the work new interpretations. He sees a great powerful living man, capable of suggesting other images of bodies not made of marble but made of flesh, such as it is in the painting with the head marked by a long and deep sewn wound, which overcomes the dimension of art.
Fragmentary nature is suitable for an uncertain present and it belongs to many art works produced by Pagano, which, furrowing uneven and unstable soils, analyze or scan beyond an apparent integrity to follow less trodden and less barren paths.
