EMILIO D’ELIA
Far from the sounds of the world
By Ilaria Caravaglio
OPENING: Saturday, May 18th 2024 at 7 pm
until 13 June 2024
Galleria Orizzonti Arte Contemporanea of Ostuni inaugurates the exhibition season of the Project Room on Saturday 18 May 2024 at 7.00 pm with the personal exhibition of Emilio D’Elia, entitled Far from the sounds of the world, curated by Ilaria Caravaglio.
After a long career in Paris, Emilio D’Elia has returned to his native San Pietro Vernotico (BR) and here he has welcomed with great enthusiasm the invitation to plan an exhibition for the internal space of our Ostuni gallery. Reflecting on a universal exhibition vision, the artist practices an exercise of infinity, and he symbolically opens, from the historic center of the White City of Ostuni, the doors of a silent art to the roar of visitors and tourists arriving from all over the world.
Here is how Ilaria Caravaglio, with her text written for the exhibition, refers us to all of D’Elia’s work:
“Thanks to Emilio D’Elia who, with his art, manages to keep us away from the noises of the world”; is from this dedication, written by the philosopher Paul Audi in one of his books donated to the artist many years ago, that D’Elia draws inspiration for the title of this exhibition.
The choice in fact fell on these words that the artist feels within him, today more than ever, making their way through the din of a polluted society, in the tireless attempt to explore the his very existence, in a life in which he feels like an actor and a spectator at the same time.
It is not an escape, but more an awareness and the need to say “enough! there is too much noise in this world!”, inviting himself and others to repair themselves by doing introspection, reflecting on one’s own being and on the relationship with a world that, everything around, it could get better. The creative process of the artist’s entire production takes place in an atelier where the noise of the life that flows outside he cannot penetrate, and this not in a figurative sense, but rather literal; the walls that see the birth of all of D’Elia’s works are those of a space surrounded by gardens with citrus trees, a place immersed in total, broken silence only by the chirping of birds or, in summer, by the alternating choruses of crickets and cicadas.
And it is in this silence, an essential ally with which Emilio D’elia merges while working, that the great sense of responsibility that accompanies the research leaves room for serenity, to a state of total tranquility, distancing oneself from this world, albeit always without neglecting it. This is how the thirty works that make up the corpus of this exhibition come to life, all of them of new production and all made with natural ecoline pigments on paper, a technique that requires great delicacy and kindness, the same ingredients that are at the heart of reflection by D’Elia.
The exhibition turns its gaze towards places forgotten by humanity, towards abandoned gardens, places that are unattainable and full of memory traces, imbued with passages, memories and… events that occurred over time. These are rusty gates, gardensabandoned, mountains, hermitages, of lush trees and figures in search of distant places, and a human figure, probably always the same, which appears, just mentioned and almost as if not wanting to disturb nature, in a few works.
Celestial City, The Garden of the Star, Garden of Always, are some of the titles of the works by in front of which the sensation is that of an immersion in serenity; some, from the formats larger, with a magnetic force, almost as if to invite you to enter, to sit inside them, others, like small and delicate jewels on the wall, which ask to be contemplated, so to speak grasp every detail.
Sheltered from the noises of the world, blue, always the protagonist in D’Elia’s painting, leaves kindly make room for shades of green, the color of nature, of vital balance, of inner stability and which refers to the solidity of personal values, self-esteem and beliefs own potential.
Emilio D’Elia’s hope is that we can grasp the great message it carries with it this exhibition: “we are living in a ferocious world, of great confusion, a state Babel in which man no longer sees man – he states – but what matters is that I, despite as the years pass, every morning you look at me in the mirror and recognize me… and know that is Emilio, a passenger aware of this existence”.
The invitation to serenity by Emilio D’Elia
by Ilaria Caravaglio
GALLERIA ORIZZONTI ARTE CONTEMPORANEA
Piazzetta Cattedrale (Historical Centre)
72017 Ostuni (Br)
Tel. 0831.335373 – Cell. 348.8032506
info@orizzontiarte.it – www.orizzontiarte.it
F: Orizzontiartecontemporanea
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