Notte Oscura_Conversation Piece | Part VIII
Pauline Curnier Jardin, Victor Man, Miltos Manetas
exhibition curated by Marcello Smarrelli
Vernissage: Monday 12th December at 6pm
Open to the public: 13thDecember 2022 –26thMarch 2023
Opening hours: every day from 11amto 6pm (closed on Tuesday)
Free admission
From 13th December 2022 to 26th March 2023 the Fondazione Memmo presents Notte Oscura (Dark Night), the eighth edition of Conversation Piece, the annual cycle of exhibitions curated by Marcello Smarrelli dedicated to Italian and foreign artists who are temporarily resident in Rome, or who have a special relationship with the city. This year the protagonists of the exhibition are Pauline Curnier Jardin (a scholarship recipient at the French Academy in Rome -Villa Medici in 2020), Victor Man and Miltos Manetas (both of whom are artists who have considered Rome as one of their cities of reference for many years now).
Thetitle of this edition, Notte Oscura,is taken from the writings of Saint John of the Cross(Juan de Yepes Álvarez 1542-1591) a saint, mystic and doctor of the Church, who is considered as one of the most important Spanish poets. The poem Dark Night of the Soul, written when Álvarez was close to death during a period of imprisonment, deals with his personal experience of nocturnal ecstasy, in which darkness isametaphor forthe adversities and obstacles encounteredwhile attempting to break one’s bondswith the world of the senses, so as to reach the light.The metaphor of night is perfectly suited to Rome and its centuries of history. Rome is acity of light and splendour, eternally reverberating inthe majestic beauty of its monumentalbuildings and the treasures insidethem, but she is also a city of catacombs, cryptoporticusand ruins, which have a dark and secret resonance. This ambivalent nature of the Eternal City is reflectedin her artworks, for example by the contrastbetween the baroque light-flooded paintingsof the Carraccis and theimages emerging fromdarkness created by Caravaggio.
Photo: Daniele Molajoli.