"And Adone does not know ..." at the MANN National Archaeological Museum of Naples from January 26th to April 25th the personal exhibition of Gaetano Di Riso is staged. A masterpiece of ancient statuary travels through the centuries, revealing itself to be one and a hundred thousand: in the exhibition " And Adone does not know ... ", scheduled at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples , the artist Gaetano Di Riso presents twelve paintings inspired by a famous sculpture belonging to the MANN collections. This is Adonis of Capua, a work that from next summer will be included in the new layout of the Campania Romana section of the Institute: marble, which dates back to the second century. AD, it decorated the Campanian Amphitheater of Santa Maria Capua Vetere. In ancient iconography, the beautiful young man, loved by Venus, represented the spirit of spring and the blossoming nature: starting from this suggestion, Di Riso applies the language of contemporary art to the reinterpretation of the myth.

The MANN exhibition , sponsored by the Banco di Napoli Foundation and sponsored by the Plart Foundation , collects twelve canvases, combined with an inlaid wooden installation (the title is not accidental: twelve faces) and three benches that reproduce the suggestions drawn from the sculptural figure. Adonis becomes a surreal creature and, in a certain sense, linked to the urban dimension: in the paintings, in which the dreamy colors of blue and shaded blue are predominant, the young man is a protective profile that flies over and observes the city, in poses that echo the imagination of Marc Chagall (canvas "The distance); it is a bridge between past and present as suggested by his bust cut in a representation; it transforms itself into an anthropomorphic creature as the guardian of an ancient memory.

The visitor has the task of hunting for symbols, getting lost in the two rooms of the exhibition (94 and 95, next to the Pompeii Model): with a calligraphic rendering, in fact, Di Riso never deviates from the sculptural original, always well recognizable for how transfigured. The artist's bet is to suggest another path, which does not shy away from learned quotations, as in the case of the canvases "Divina Commedia" and " Villa dei Misteri ": "I began to work on the statue by carrying it symbolically around the places of art, it was like documenting myself and demonstrating my interpretation of the facts. It was me and Adonis, travelers on earth. We flew over landscapes, bridges, houses, we got to know the elements, creating new configurations ", comments Gaetano Di Riso .

Ph. Credit: Antonio Caporaso and Jacopo Naddeo