“After almost a month since the immersive installation Divina Tenebra opened to the public
by the artist Marco Papa, an unexpected event is born at the San Rocco Museum, but one that we all the more urge you not to miss.
Only a dense concentration of artists in the same territory can make what happened and what we propose to you happen; going to disturb, to tell it, two characters of great caliber: Rolando Bellini, art historian; and Guido Barbieri, music historian.”: this is how the director of the diocesan museum of contemporary art “San Rocco” Liborio Palmeri announces the original event in which a musical composition intervenes and animates an artistic installation that becomes alive, dynamic as contemporary art should be.
So what happened? “Marco Papa has recently inaugurated his enormous paper installation, a real cellulose labyrinth, which represents his “first page” where as a child he began to draw his art and his life. This white page tells the complex relationship with his mother through a small portrait of her painted by the child artist and broken and recomposed several times, and, gradually, through other drawings, objects and sculptures, which fill with wonder for their beauty. In this way Marco Papa shares with the visitor his existential journey, in which there is so much pain, but also a growing inner light, which in the installation corresponds to the growth of black graphite on white paper, until reaching total darkness, within which the artist presents to the visitor the discovery of a metaphysical light that was a balm for his pain. The installation’s “ring-composition” finds in the so-called “Dancing Crucifix” the starting and finishing point of this journey” Don Liborio explains: “So, while Marco Papa spreads out his paper all over the ground floor of the San Rocco Museum, the pianist Giacometta Marrone D’Alberti, recently returned to Sicily from her adoptive homeland, Germany, feels the need to express herself even in her restlessness, but the keys are not enough for her, the form does not satisfy her; and so she moves away from the keys and the form. She enters the soundboard of her piano and without creating any score, but using a tape recorder, she unleashes an improvised, frenetic composition, which is born from a dawn of “grave and resonant sound” and ends in a “twilight and faint light that slowly fades into the murmuring pianissimo of sounds that are increasingly distant, unattainable, piercing” (Guido Barbieri). Here too, a “ring composition” within which sounds are unleashed that are so powerful that they create a void in which the artist finds herself fully. “My hands dance to caress, strike, swipe, pinch, vibrate, entering into harmony with my sacred body,” she says, and this dance becomes a cosmic dance, in which the “sacred body” is the entire universe. When I was invited to listen to this music, I decided to have Marco Papa listen to the piece of music,” concludes the director of the Museum. “This is the first note of his reaction: “Giacometta’s piece is assonant. Vibrations, forces and intentions are on the horizon of my landscape. Have you had experiences similar to mine? Your “Sacred Body” coincides with my “Divine Darkness,” accompanying those who enter to experience the salvation and glory of my Mother.”
Marco Papa’s work is thus enriched with a new synaesthetic level. It was necessary to call someone, better able than others, to tell it. And Rolando Bellini and Guido Barbieri will do it together with Don Liborio Palmeri.
Appointment Tuesday 2 July 2024, at 19.00, in the Salone dell’Abbraccio of the Museo San Rocco (second floor, entrance via Nunzio Nasi 1). On this occasion, the critical interventions of Rolando Bellini and Guido Barbieri will be distributed as room sheets and you will be guided in listening to “Corpo Sacro” and then make it personal and free experience by immersing yourself in the installation “Divina Tenebra” by Marco Papa.
