Reload
Claudio Catanese
Museo Hermann Nitsch
vico lungo pontecorvo 29/d Napoli
Opening Wednesday 8 May 2024 from 6.00 pm
Special guests Sacha Ricci, Daniele Sepe, Rino Saggio, Mario Formisano, Mario Catanese, Moxedano
RELOAD is an archive exhibition on Claudio Catanese (Enna 1952- Naples 2021), hosted in the spaces of the Hermann Nitsch Museum in Naples, from Thursday 9 May to Saturday 8 June 2024.
It brings together a selection of visual works of art, poems, music and writings from his production - from 1980 to 2021 - and involves the definition of a dual path, artistic and documentary.
Claudio Catanese is an artist who operated on the fringe of the art system, tracing poetic paths and confirming that he fully belonged to an important period of the underground culture of the city of Naples. An authentic living artistic force, an intangible heritage that, even today, awaits to be adequately recognized and documented.
...There are, in fact, moments of individual production of great value in Claudio’s work, expressed in various media. A painting that anarchically explores the myriad of combinations of the figurative and non-figurative, the geometric, the gestural and the material, not disdaining the selection of objects. In the 'Passwords' cycle, around 2007, the work changes into painted poetry that explores the rhythmic-significant combinations of language in a manner that denounces a kinship, albeit somewhat distantly, with the Lettrist techniques: reconciling sound, sign, and color. A solution in which the pictorial is synthetically combined with his parallel activity of para-poetic writing, albeit often linked to the form of the fragment, contained for the most part in notebooks for private use, and continually punctuated by signs and drawings, evidence of the continuous ebullition of his brain and vibration of his hand. And one must not forget the production of electronic audio compositions he recorded himself, and to which he devoted the last period of his life[1].
He was an active member of Toni Ferro's Community Theater and his artistic, poetic and musical aptitudes were inspired by the Living Theater, both precious sources for the creation of numerous city happenings and performances. Protagonist in Naples, in the early 90s, of the city's underground culture, co-founder of the International Alchemical Office, promoter of the Blue Cobalt Cultural Association and creator of OvoSapiens Productions, self-produced literary and musical publishing.
The list of events in which he participated is numerous.
He liked to define himself as a “Post-Dadaist-Psychedelic” artist.
The digital archive work of all the artistic material left by Claudio, as well as this event, was possible thanks to Mario Catanese, Stefano Taccone, Giuseppe Morra, Raffaella Morra, Tluise, Nathalie Heidsieck, Nunzia Scorpiniti, Giulia Piscitelli, Stefano Aletto.
...it's a shame not to have any recognition for what has been done, but it's also a shame to forget... Claudio Catanese
[1] Extract from “Being together creatively” by Stefano Taccone, April 2024