AGOSTINO IACURCI | Straperetana 2024 SUPERNATURALE

Palazzo Maccafani, Palazzo Iannucci e le strade del borgo Pereto (L’Aquila), 14 July -18 August 2024

From 13 July to 18 August 2024, among the streets, squares and palaces of Pereto (AQ), a millenary village that is called the Porta d’Abruzzo (the Abruzzo Gate) due to its position, straperetana returns, the event founded by Paola Capata and Delfo Durante, now in its eighth edition, which since 2017 has brought a widespread exhibition of contemporary art to this place steeped in history.

This year’s straperetana, realised in collaboration with Annalisa Inzana, involves 17 Italian and international artists in an exhibition entitled Supernatural, which, despite its name, does not refer to something that transcends the limits of experience, but rather, playing with the suffix SUPER, that of the absolute superlative, emphasises how the artists have all experienced a totalising and very personal immersion in Nature.

Pereto is a town that for most of the year has no more than six hundred inhabitants. For those who come from the valley and observe it, perched on the slopes of Monte Fontecellese, it almost resembles a natural formation surrounded by woods. And it is from this immersion in Nature that the concept of Supernatural was born, involving artists who have made the physical and intellectual relationship with the environment, the passion for science, the observation of the landscape in a romantic or conceptual sense, the centre of their poetics and research. The artists featured in this edition are explorers, measurers, observers, researchers, shamans, whose passion for the mystery of the World they traverse never ends.
The itinerary, which includes about thirty works, starts from the rooms of Palazzo Maccafani, in the square of the same name next to Pereto Castle, crosses the streets of the village and ends at Palazzo Iannucci, in Piazza San Giorgio in the lower part of the village.
The works by Francis Alÿs, Federica Belli, Nina Carini, Giorgio Cesarini, Davide D’Elia, Hamish Fulton, Agostino Iacurci, Giovanni Kronenberg, Gaia Liberatore, Davide Mariani, Numero Cromatico, Anastasiya Parvanova, Salvo, Tarin, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Nico Vascellari, and María Ángeles Vila Tortosa each tell of a personal encounter with Nature, understood as landscape, natural environment, or body.

Also for this edition, the event continues to work with the territory, collaborating with local institutions such as the Academy of Fine Arts of L’Aquila, whose exhibition involves three students, Gaia Liberatore, Giorgio Cesarini and Davide Mariani, the latter the protagonist of a pilot project of mini-residencies in the village.

Supernatural opens at Palazzo Maccafani with the works of Hamish Fulton (London – UK, 1946), an artist who since the 1970s has identified the act of walking as the art form that allows him to approach nature and meet himself, Nico Vascellari (Vittorio Veneto, 1976), whose work investigates the relationship between man and nature by interweaving the personal and collective dimensions, Salvo (Salvatore Mangione, 1947-2015), who in the 1970s pushed his research to investigate the Italian landscape iconography of the great masters; and also Nina Carini (Palermo, 1991), whose installations build immersive environments that mix natural and artificial suggestions, and Patrick Tuttofuoco (Milan, 1974) fascinated by the sometimes terrible beauty of atmospheric phenomena.

The exhibition continues through the streets of the village, which host the photographs, between landscape and self-portrait, of the young photographer Federica Belli (Mondovì, 1998), an unpublished installation by Numero Cromatico – a collective of researchers in the fields of art, architecture and neuroscience founded in 2011 – and a site-specific wall painting by Agostino Iacurci (Foggia, 1986), an artist with an unmistakable style that mixes local stories, memories, literature and folklore.

At Palazzo Iannucci we find Agostino Iacurci with a large work on canvas, María Ángeles Vila Tortosa (Valencia – Spain, 1978) with a series of new engravings inspired by ancient medieval herbals, and the young artists of the Academy Gaia Liberatore (Rome, 2000), Giorgio Cesarini (Caserta, 2000) and Davide Mariani (Cagliari, 1998). The first floor of the building continues with sculptural works by Giovanni Kronenberg (Milan, 1974), the photographic works between landscape and body by Tarin (Rimini, Italy), paintings by Anastasiya Parvanova (Burgas – Bulgaria, 1990), reflections on the landscape as a system of ecosystems, and Francis Alÿs (Antwerp – Belgium, 1959) whose work originates in the interdisciplinary space between art, architecture and social practice.
Davide D’Elia (Cava dei Tirreni, 1974) closes the exhibition with an installation conceived for this edition, an expression of research into the memory of space and time.

We thank the Municipality of Pereto
We thank the Giustini Family, Francesca Iannucci, Maria Luisa Iannucci, the Meuti – Cristofari Family, the Ventura Family, the L’Aquila Academy of Fine Arts, Elena Bellantoni, Cecilia Canziani, Maurizio Coccia, Silvano Manganaro
Thanks to Silvia Forniti for coordination

INFORMATION

Straperetana Cultural Association
Palazzo Maccafani, Piazza Maccafani 5, Pereto (AQ)
info@straperetana.org
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