In the year of the centenary of the birth of Pier Paolo Pasolini, four artists pay homage to the great intellectual in an exhibition curated by Massimo Mattioli and inaugurated on the occasion of the ‘Contemporary Day’ promoted by AMACI - Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums. The exhibition identifies decisive signs in the work of four Italian artists active in different expressive mediums: Elena Bellantoni, Davide Dormino, Rocco Dubbini, Giovanni Gaggia.
The cornerstone of Pasolini's lesson is the yearning and convinced practice of FREEDOM, experienced by the writer and journalist as an essential element of existence, to be defended even at the cost of cultural and political ostracism, of obstacles to the circulation and acceptance of his ideas and his works, up to personal suffering and death.
The title of the project, conceived by the artists Giovanni Gaggia and Rocco Dubbini and edited by Massimo Mattioli, is inspired by a famous article by Pasolini published in the Corriere della Sera, in which he tore the veils of hypocrisy on certain truths hidden behind dramas which marked Italian history in the difficult 70s. With this, he claimed his own intellectual freedom, but at the same time antagonized a large part of public opinion and national political spheres. And "Golpe" is also the title of the work that in some ways sums up the profound meaning of the exhibition project, created by Dubbini and Gaggia, who in this tribute evoke the role of the Navy, which according to many thinkers became an emblem libertarian denying its support for the Borghese coup.
Independence of judgment returns in all the works on display, often as a direct tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini. As in the photograph "The ashes of Gramsci", by Elena Bellantoni, in which the artist identifies with Pasolini himself, wearing his clothes and - where possible - assuming his appearance to recreate the scenery of his homage to the tomb of the great philosopher and communist thinker. Or as in the installation "The chairs of the blond Tiber", by Davide Dormino, who recovers the original chairs that welcomed Pasolini's last supper in the Roman restaurant Biondo Tevere, on the evening he was killed.
Gaggia's presence in the exhibition is articulated, with works ranging from a series of pictorial interpretations of the intellectual's face to a series of embroideries, his personal testimony of resistance to institutional "censorship" and compressed freedom. And so is that of Dubbini, who among other things recalls Pasolini's close bond with his mother in the profound installation "Mantra".