DOPO CENA

AFTER DINNER

Solo exhibition by Luca Coclite

Curated by Gianluca Marinelli
Parati Project – Campagna Amica Covered Market (147 Via Umbria, Taranto).
Opening: 14 November 2026, 6:30 p.m.
Open to the public: 14 November – 15 December 2026.


From 14 November to 15 December 2026, Parati Project presents After Dinner, a solo exhibition by Luca Coclite. The project retraces the main directions of the artist’s practice through a selection of recent works alongside new pieces conceived specifically for the exhibition space. Working across a range of media—from video installation to ceramics, from photography to painting—Coclite develops a profound reflection on the relationship between individuals and their surroundings, examining the processes through which places construct, lose, or transform their identity.

At the heart of the exhibition is a precise methodological choice: to view the familiar landscape from a decentered perspective. By choosing his native territory as a field of investigation, the artist reveals it for what it truly is: a material, layered archive in which historical memories, economic dynamics, and social relations are deposited. Within this constantly evolving organism, the persistence of forms does not necessarily coincide with the persistence of identity: architectural structures and elements of the urban and territorial fabric often outlive the functions and contexts that generated them, bearing witness to the fracture between past and present and disrupting “the coincidence between belonging and recognition” (L. Coclite). It is precisely within this gap that a profound sense of disorientation emerges—the experience of inhabiting a place without being fully able to recognize it any longer.

From this awareness, the artist’s research turns toward the conceptual significance of the fragment and the ruin, as well as the microsocial dimension of everyday gestures and rituals, understood as the true invisible building blocks of our relationship with space. This reflection takes shape in particular in the four-channel video installation TERRITORIO, presented on CRT monitors integrated into concrete totems. Through a linguistic and visual short circuit, the work reveals ritual as the symbolic foundation of place and as a device capable of giving substance to the environment, perpetually suspended between the repetition of habit and the potential for reinvention.

These themes acquire a particular resonance in the space of Parati Project, an environment that has undergone various changes of use over time and still visibly preserves the traces of its transformations. The material layers of the architecture enter into direct dialogue with the works, transforming the exhibition space from a merely neutral container into an integral part of the artistic project—one capable of amplifying its suggestions and generating further levels of interpretation.

The title of the exhibition itself, After Dinner, encapsulates the entire project. It evokes what remains when a collective ritual or event has ended: scraps, remnants, secondary presences. Like what is left on a table at the end of a meal, these residual and apparently marginal forms recount what has taken place indirectly. It is precisely in what survives that Luca Coclite identifies the possibility of questioning the present, offering an unexpected and revealing perspective on the transformations of the world we inhabit.

LUCA COCLITE. Luca Coclite’s artistic practice (Gagliano del Capo, 1981) focuses on the analysis of the representation of landscape and architecture. Through the observation and documentation of transformations in specific territories, he investigates landscape as a cultural construct, examining the social and political dynamics that determine its transformations and modes of representation.

He has taken part in national and international residency programs, and his work has been presented in museums, foundations, and exhibition spaces. Over the years, he has co-founded artistic and curatorial projects such as Ramdom and Casa a Mare. In 2018, together with Laura Perrone, he founded studioconcreto, a research and experimental platform dedicated to the relationships between artistic practices, cultural production, and territory.

PARATI. Founded in December 2025, Parati is a project room dedicated to contemporary artistic research. The project is run by artist and art historian Gianluca Marinelli, photographer Angelo Greco, and curator Cristina Carriere. Parati forms part of a program for promoting the local area supported by Coldiretti Taranto and Campagna Amica, which aim to foster cultural and community-oriented initiatives.


Opening: Saturday, 14 November 2026, 6:30 p.m.
Exhibition period: 14 November – 15 December 2026
Visiting hours:
Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday: 8:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
On other days by appointment.
Web: www.instagram.com/project.p...