On Saturday 8 June at 6.00 pm, in the garden of the Donnafugata Castle, the sculpture will be presented The Child Minotaur by Emanuele Scuotto.
Even the Minotaur, before transforming into the beast we all fear, was a child. Therefore Emanuele Scuotto wanted to represent him as a putto, a little angel, one of those playful figures that populate the ceilings of churches or baroque palaces. Alongside a very explicit meaning that evil can hide behind innocent appearances, there is a second, slightly less obvious one, which explains this choice: good and evil coexist, they are even ambivalent. The artist does not ask us to love the Minotaur or be ready to embrace him; he invites us to understand it, as Canova did before Theseus and the Minotaur or Cattelan’s Him, the creaturely dimension. In the sculpture of the first, Theseus is not at all happy with the monster’s defeat: he limits himself to reflecting on death and destiny. In the second one, Hitler is a child saying prayers. Could he have remained good, followed a different path? What is certain is that man is capable of becoming everything and its opposite. He can sink to the ferinitas of the brutes or ascend to the divine. Not surprisingly, the mantle of Child Minotaur it is intense blue in color and studded with stars. The monster, which has the name Asterion, is also a constellation.
Scuotto’s sculpture, which takes Pasiphae’s place at the center of the Castle’s labyrinth, is the second stage of Labyrinthusan exhibition that offers, from 18 May to 30 October 2024, five different interpretations of the Dedalic myths, entrusted to the sculptors Luigi Citarrella, Emanuele Scuotto, Alessia Forconi, Fulvio Merolli and Giacomo Rizzo.
Conceived and curated by Andrea Guastella, created by Studio M’arte with the patronage of the Regional Department of Public Function and Local Autonomy and the Municipality of Ragusa, the exhibition lasts six months.
The different works will be installed in the center of the labyrinth, in rotation, for an entire month, before being moved to the garden. To see them, it will therefore be necessary to “get lost” in the meanders of the labyrinth, reflecting in this slow journey on the myths and their relevance.
The sculpture will be introduced by Clorinda Arezzo and Andrea Guastella.
During the presentation Massimo Leggio will read a selection of songs dedicated to the Minotaur, from Borges to Dürrenmatt to Cortázar.
Labyrinthus will be open every day, except Monday, from 09:00 to 19:00
from 18 May to 30 October 2024
From the text by Andrea Guastella:
Contemporary art, according to Bonito Oliva, is born and lives under the sign of the labyrinth: rather than giving answers, it proposes questions, works on the truth, does not abandon itself to time but precedes it. He practices the labyrinth “as a metonymic movement of language itself”, felt to be governed by an absolute wandering, a nomadism that the artist takes as his chosen operational mode. Man without genealogy, priest of a cult unknown to most, it is up to him to deconstruct the language of tradition to transfigure it into myth. The artist thus establishes a magical and secret kingdom within which it is possible to access the mystery of life. The labyrinth in contemporary art is therefore no longer a theme, a topos, but the language itself, constantly rewritten and renewed by those who pass through it by rereading the saga of the Minotaur, of Theseus, of Daedalus and Icarus, of Ariadne and Pasiphae. The story is known. Minos receives legendary bulls as a gift from Poseidon. As a sign of gratitude, every year, the sovereign is called to sacrifice the most beautiful animal to the god. And yet, when the time has come to fulfill the cult, the fittest bull is too dear to him, and he decides to opt for a second choice. Angry at his behavior, Poseidon punishes Minos by making his wife Pasiphae fall in love with a bull to the point of being seized by an irresistible desire to copulate with him. Almost driven mad by her induced passion, the queen convinces Daedalus, the court inventor, to design an instrument to facilitate the bestial union. Thus Daedalus produces a bronze cow into which Pasiphae enters and, immediately afterwards, unites with the bull. From this meeting the Minotaur was born: a bloody half-man, half-bull creature that Daedalus, commanded by Minos, locked up in a place from which he could not escape: the labyrinth. Prison where the Minotaur is fed by young Athenians, whose lives are offered as tribute by Aegeus, the city’s ruler. To save them from their fate of death, Theseus, the “foreign” son of Egeus, offers to kill the monster. He will succeed with the help of Ariadne, the natural daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, who will give the hero a thread of hers to allow him to find the exit from the labyrinth. Having accomplished his mission, with the help of Daedalus, Theseus will run away with Ariadne but, having fallen in love with Phaedra, her sister, he will abandon her on an island, where the girl will console herself by receiving the attentions of the god Dionysus, who will take her as a wife. Theseus, however, will return to Athens, but, cursed by Ariadne, he will forget to fulfill a request from Aegeus: to lower the black sails with which he had set sail if he had succeeded in his intent. Seeing the ships decked out in mourning, Egeo will commit suicide. Daedalus, however, for the help offered to Ariadne and Theseus, will be condemned to live together with his son Icarus in the labyrinth he built himself. Both will fly away on wax wings modeled by Daedalus: Icarus, however, gets too close to the sun, loses his wings and falls to the ground. The issues addressed, from the dangers of science and technology to the importance of women and manual labor (thread weaving) to intolerance towards the other, the different, the foreigner, are extremely current. And the same can be said for the psychological implications of the story, from the exploitation of desire to the flaring of passions. In this sense, the exhibition Labyrinthus transforms the labyrinth and park of Donnafugata Castle into physical images of an interior epiphany: in the mysterious and unpredictable places where five Italian sculptors, from May to October 2024, are called to find themselves and show us the way.
Luigi Citarrella
Luigi Citarrella was born in Palermo in 1981. As a boy he felt an innate predisposition towards the subject, and in the classrooms of the sculpture school of the Palermo Academy he grew up in close contact with great masters. His works are the expression of a cultured and committed Sicily and of an art that takes into account the pluralism of languages and technical innovations that characterize contemporaneity. From molded clay to sculpted marble to lacquered resins, his art has a very strong emotional impact.
Sculpture teacher at the Academy of Reggio Calabria. His works are present in public and private collections.
Emanuele Scuotto
A shy artist of few words, Emanuele expresses himself through clay which, in his hands, transforms into figures and symbols with a strong evocative power, which speak of our time but also of memories and personal stories, at times intimate. Through his markedly Neapolitan DNA, the artist delves into the depths of human existence and tells his story and tells of light and shadow, of restlessness and beauty, of pain and rebirth: everything that could disappear in the rush of everyday life remains imprinted in matter, worked artfully, and is transformed into pieces of memory. Emanuele observes and reworks, internalizes and transforms, in the continuous search for another dimension to reach through his language, his intimate urgency, his daily bread: sculpture.
Alessia Forconi
Alessia Forconi was born in Rome in 1975 and trained between the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and that of Carrara; Over the years she has participated in numerous exhibitions and competitions, obtaining various awards. You create many monumental works, both public and private. Sculptures of her can be found in Italy, France, Serbia, Türkiye and Japan. In the latter country, in 2017, a personal lei was held in the city museum of Ohtawara.
Fulvio Merolli
Fulvio Merolli follows a rigorous path of artistic studies from high school to the Academy of Fine Arts, first in Rome and then in Carrara. After graduating he was entrusted with the Chair of Artistic Anatomy at the Academy of San Remo which he left after two years in favor of professional training work at the most prestigious studios of artistic marble processing in Carrara, collaborating in the technical and productive development of the works of some leading artists of contemporary art. Since the early 2000s he has been collaborating in Rome with the associated studio M’arte sculpture. Over the years he has participated in various international exhibitions and won various prizes, including the FL Catel prize for sculpture. He is a sculpture teacher at the RUFA in Rome.
Giacomo Rizzo
Giacomo Rizzo, born in Palermo in 1977, is professor of Sculpture and Foundry Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo. He lives between Palermo, Cordoba and Lima. His poetics are configured as a continuous search for aesthetics and language through direct contact with nature and its territory which becomes a place of the soul for the artist. From the encounter with natural space he draws strong sensations and suggestions which, together with a careful analysis of contemporary society, send, through sculpture, clear and precise messages on the relationship between man and the environment. His works and installations in relation to the territory and architecture are present in numerous public and private collections and in international museums.
Labyrinthus
edited by Andrea Guastella
May 18-October 30, 2024
Donnafugata Castle Park
Contrada Donnafugata, 97100 Ragusa
Opening hours: 09:00-19:00 (box office closes at 19:00; stay permitted until 19:45)
Closed on Mondays
Park entrance: 2 euros
