Capri B&B
Behind and beyond, curated by Adriana Rispoli
Raffaela Mariniello and Eugenio Tibaldi are artists who don’t belong to the same generation, nor did they grow up in the same city; they also both depart from esthetics which are quite different. However their work has the same kind of starting-point and their research shows affinity, such as the fascination for the peripheries, the attention for the microcosmoses and an idea of beauty that overturns every common feeling.
The show in the Certosa is composed of 20 works, among these photographs, installations and collages. The greater part of it has been realized in a site-specific way. These works show a common reflection on the island of Capri, on its non-common beauties, on the relation between man and nature which elicits the myth that enwraps the island and whose aura legendarily continues to be nurtured by mass tourism which has also invested in this pearl of the Mediterranean.
The artists, each in his/her own modus operandi, have worked on various aspects of the territory involving in their artistic processes the local communities. Eugenio Tilbaldi’s 46 bed places and Raffaela Mariniello’s Capri Teorema stand out in the show. The first one is installed in the Giardino del Priore is a real and truly monumental setting with a dual effect; its estethics and conceptual solemnity lie in the front, which has been painted in a masterly way, as much as it lie in the back where innocent tubes appear from the scaffolding. All this is a distinctive feature in the artist’s poetics which unveils the humble origins of the support. 46 bed places exalts the concept of the exhibition offering the representation of Capri’s icon: the Faraglioni. Its myth has been increased by the travellers but at the same time favored by man’s work in a kind of maintenance/ support, both mental as practical.
Tilbaldi’s work is faced with Raffaela Mariniello’s photographic installation Capri Teorema which is composed of 32 images in different sizes. It is a visual tale that runs through a Capri which is different than the Capri we know now. Mariniello shows her vision of the island that passes through the more secret parts of the island, the ones less frequented by tourism and where as always in Mariniello’s work man is only in transit if we read his traces, for better or for worse. Clearly it is an abandoned Capri, object of a story at moonlight traced on the border of a seasonal landscape. Between surreal landscapes and abandoned travels stand out the incredible still lifes of the so-called spontaneous installations which are captured along the seafront and rural paths, micro surprise visits in a reality that seam to deceive that aspect of the myth, of the place of sweet desire and and many visitors.
The ideological and formal bond of the two artists is summarized in the work Capri B&B, a four handed work in which the typical intervention of deduction by means of the white paint of Eugenio Tibaldi takes place on a photo of Raffaela Mariniello. Her photo depicts a subject which has attracted the attention of both artists: the Arco Naturale (natural arch), one of the more important symbols of the island and at this moment in restauration. Far from each controversy, this ‘upsetting’ work -both familiar and repelling, which subject definitely gets shifted becoming hereby an estranged landscape, a kind of meteor- is the symbol of the union between man and nature, of the commitment which is necessary to maintain this idealizing beauty.
The purpose of the exhibition Capri B&B – an acronym of behind & beyond is an obvious word play related to the low cost reception that has started to spread also in an exclusive place as Capri - is to offer to the public a vision that goes beyond the appearances. By means of a non-conventional look the artists unmask in an ironic way the scenic design thanks to which all is presented in such an extra ordinary perfect way. At the sometime it is a vision which highlighting the reality of man’s work, which off stage makes it possible.
Curated by Adriana Rispoli