Lello
Esposito, the Parthenope Syndrome
Stendhal wrote: "There are two capitals
in Europe: Paris and Naples".
Lello Esposito responds, in his own way, to
the assertion of the "Milanese" Beyle
by portraying what has become not so much a
metropolis - like New York, Cairo or Bombay
- as a category of the spirit in the collective
imagination. Or at least he does all he can
to convince us to see it this way.
Proceeding by hypothesis, the Neapolitan artist
would end up working on an abstraction, an idea
generated by an excess of myth, when reality
surrenders to the semantic abuse to which it
has been subjected in time, and becomes "something
else": something that belongs to our senses
and our memory, something we can recognize without
direct knowledge, though in the end we can never
possess it.
Here lies the paradox. All that is left for
Esposito is to begin from a realization of loss.
He has no other choice. Naples, his city, the
womb from which he comes, denies herself to
him, though at the same time she represents
a substantial portion of his genetic code. The
capital christened by Stendhal is too closely
linked to him for it to be transformed into
intelligible narrative, anecdote, celebration
or rhetoric, perhaps: precisely what we might
have expected from the figurative exuberance
of this artist so naturally versed, according
to the whim of the moment, in wild-style metropolitan
graffiti or the nativity scene figurine that,
"leavened", rises and swells to become
a monumental sculpture.
Anyway, one thing is certain: Naples backlashes
against Esposito almost as a matter of unhappy
destiny. This, I repeat, is due to emotional
exaggeration. As the anonymous author of the
Palatine Anthology wrote: "Never speak
of love, lest you lose it in the words".
But the paradoxes don't stop here. The genius
loci that overbearingly demands satisfaction
and drives the artist toward that impossible
identikit becomes a messenger of mortal melancholy
and restlessness. The promised celebration,
that of the recognition of roots made of Mediterranean
colors, sounds, cries and odors, is twisted
into a painful, at times tragic script.
This psychic and emotional synchronism is the
field in which the artist conducts his research.
Having failed in his objective, he has to return
to the path that was his in any case, a "journey"
that has become indispensable, toward a destination
that no longer exists.
Thus the unattained love object - the "continent"
of Naples - emerges almost by spontaneous pollution,
through a signage of lucky charms and apotropaic
fetishes, humble memorabilia, relics, bric-à-brac,
devotional images, votive offerings. A chaotic,
kitsch inventory the artist uses to celebrate
a propitiatory ritual, which will allow him
to recover all the pagan content in his religious
fervor. For Esposito, the path to knowledge
moves in this obligatory direction.
A central, demiurgic figure, "present"
even when not represented, Pulcinella appears,
at this point, to indicate the ancestral archetype.
Protògonos of Neapolitan consciousness,
the symbol that more than any other has been
affected by the subversion of meanings in tradition
and folklore, Pulcinella is deprived of his
standard, stereotypical attributes. "I
have stripped away the mask a thousand times",
the artist admits, "I have laid bare the
man behind this mask". Which means defiling
it in its untouchable sacredness and then "using"
it as a pretext for expression, as a pure sign,
to the point of making it become the earmark
of an inscription in continuous evolution, outrageously
metaphorical, capable of being simultaneously
barbaric and baroque, popular in the most reckless
sense of the term.
"The challenge was to use a mask-character
about whom everything has already been said
and done", says the artist, "but to
always use it in different ways". Thus
the similarity to the constituent verbal and
alphabetical modes of every communicable language
is announced and guaranteed by Esposito himself.
He is one who speaks "Pulcinellese",
one who instinctively knows that making art
is above all an impulse to communicate, an offering
from mine to yours, perhaps to the point of
abnegation: nothing more. To echo Barthes, art
is simultaneously langue and parole, the sharing
of what belongs to us, for better or worse,
enchantment and repulsion included.
Artists of Esposito's breed are not required
to foresee the reaction of the audience, nor
must they concern themselves with entertaining,
delighting, reassuring it. What is important
is to pull forth - as in the dramatic Moto rigenerativo
(Regenerating motion), where a Pulcinella obscenely
sprawled on a chair vomits himself - the moods
that infest us, the population of little demons
that possess us and decide our fate. Obsessions,
rantings, plunges of the psyche - perhaps an
involuntary recouping of the Goya of the Caprichos
- whatever suffices, in any case, to convince
us that someone is paying attention to us, even
against our will; that, in short, no one can
ask us to justify our shortcomings.
