**TREASURE OF SAN GENNARO**
_A Cloud as a Carpet_
by
GIULIA PISCITELLI
October 26, 2024 - January 25, 2025
San Gennaro Treasure Museum
Via Duomo 149, Naples
On Saturday, October 26, 2024, the exhibition "A Cloud as a Carpet" by Giulia Piscitelli opens at the San Gennaro Treasure Museum in Naples, available for visit until January 25, 2025.
The exhibition is set up along the entire museum route. From the Baroque Chapel, through the Sacristies, and continuing into the museum halls where the precious gifts offered over the centuries to San Gennaro are kept, the exhibition presents three groups of works alongside a tribute to the Patron Saint, displayed for the first time ever. These works reveal common perspectives: the encounter between the real and the divine, the meeting of tradition and modernity, and finally between past and present, and also artistic expression understood as a message of social and political reflection, all the more urgent and necessary in a historical moment of clashes between peoples, cultures, and religions like ours.
Presenting the exhibition alongside the artist this morning (Friday, October 25) were Mons. Vincenzo De Gregorio, Abbot Prelate of the Royal Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, Riccardo Carafa D'Andria, Vice President of the Deputation of the Royal Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, Girolamo Carignani di Novoli, Deputation of the Royal Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, Francesca Ummarino, Director of the San Gennaro Treasure Museum, Ilaria D'Uva, CEO D'Uva srl, Stefano Chiodi, art historian and critic, Università Roma Tre, and Giangi Fonti, director of the Galleria Fonti in Naples.
"A Cloud as a Carpet" is an installation consisting of 21 Catholic kneelers, liturgical wooden furniture covered with colorful Muslim prayer rug fabrics. A work that unites the three monotheistic religions into a single piece, arriving in Italy for the first time; "Planeta," a work made with Kevlar fabric in golden yellow, derived from a bulletproof vest, composed of over a hundred pieces sewn together forming an elliptical shape with an explicit reference to the liturgical vestment of a priestly planeta; the work of halos on maps, a result of the artist's research connecting earth and sky, between real and divine. Completing the exhibition is a tribute to the Patron Saint titled Naso, displayed for the first time ever.
Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog published by D'Uva in Italian and English, introduced by a text by Erri De Luca taken from his book "A Cloud as a Carpet" (Feltrinelli, 1991), which inspired the exhibition's title and one of the works presented. The publication gathers the contribution of art historian and critic Stefano Chiodi, along with texts by Mons. Vincenzo De Gregorio, Abbot of the Royal Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, and Francesca Ummarino, director of the San Gennaro Treasure Museum, accompanied by photographs by Amedeo Benestante. Special thanks to the Galleria Fonti in Naples.
"Suspended between disenchantment and an instinct for renewal, between sacred and vulgar, between consumption and preservation, Giulia Piscitelli's works shake our laziness as spectators: they remind us of the blind persistence of things and the illusion of permanence. It's the old paradox of art: it teaches us to escape and explains that escaping is, in any case, impossible," are the words of art critic Stefano Chiodi, from the exhibition catalog text.
Giulia Piscitelli's A Cloud as a Carpet at the San Gennaro Treasure Museum in Naples will be open to the public until Saturday, January 25, 2025, and can be visited during museum opening hours (the cost of the museum ticket includes entrance to the exhibition).
Info and hours at www.tesorosangennaro.it.
******
Giulia Piscitelli
A Cloud as a Carpet
NAPLES / San Gennaro Treasure Museum
Via Duomo 149
October 26, 2024 - January 25, 2025
Museum hours: every day from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Last entry 45 minutes before closing
www.tesorosangennaro.it
Web:
www.tesorosangennaro.it