The exhibition, IEROGAMIA - La guarigione attraverso it mito e il rito (Hierogamy - Healing through Myth and Ritual), by ANGELO CRICCHI, curated by Gianluca Marziani, will open to the public on Wednesday, May 31st, 2023, as part of Visionarea ArtSpace’s summer program - a project supported by the Fondazione Cultura e Arte (an instrumental institution of the Fondazione Terzo Pilastro - Internazionale, chaired by Prof. Emmanuele F. M. Emanuele). IEROGAMIA - La guarigione attraverso it mito e il rito , open until September 12th, 2023, is a photographic project that brings together several unreleased works and retrospective works by Angelo Cricchi that, here, encounter a refulgent exhibition concept. An exhibition conceived as a narrative course along the walls and floors of the two rooms of the contemporary venue on Via della Conciliazione, as it envelopes visitors in a labyrinth of colors, myths, rituals, allegories, and images, while paying homage to several female figures who, in relation to nature, have had an influence the collective imagination. A ritual of visual and thematic passages where bodies, metamorphoses, myths, as well as the sacred and the esoteric transform the whiteness of the gallery into woods, a metaphysical labyrinth. The exhibition begins in the first room, entirely dedicated to Hildegard of Bingen, who was a Christian abbess, writer, mystic, and German theologian, but also herbalist, naturalist, gemologist, and cosmologist, venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church and declared Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. It is in this first room that the figure of Hildegard takes shape through artistic photographs, Angelo Cricchi’s “imagos”, which poetically re-proposes life and mysticism, portraying it in different forms, places, and ages: Ildegarda con ancelle (Hildegard with Handmaids) stands out at the bottom of the central wall in dark woods, while, on both sides, Ildegarda bambina (Hildegard Child) and Ildegarda adulta (Hildegard Adult) slip out of the woods. On the two longer sides we find two diptychs and a sequence in three shots: on one side are the hierogamous rituals among the wilds of the woods, placed in a “perilous” relationship with the male figure of the mandylion; on the other side is a labyrinth under a Mediterranean sun. From the first to the second room, the mystical narrative of the encounter between gods continues in the Garden of Eden, a sensory installation that accompanies the audiovisual installation of “The Secret Life of Plants. The last works in the second room, Santa Cecilia and Santa Veronica, hurdle us into whiteness and metaphysical sensuality. The IEROGAMIA - La guarigione attraverso it mito e il rito journey ends with the most archaic and universal object among human artifacts: the enameled ceramic vase, a practical vessel filled with infinitely complex stories. Prof. Emmanuele F. M. Emanuele, Fondazione Terzo Pilastro - Internazionale, comments: “Angelo Cricchi is a lover of stories. He is attracted by ideas, places, bodies – with which, as a former athlete, he has a very natural relationship – but, above all, by faces. He builds his works on these elements, which are a dramatic system, intended as theatrical, with a markedly figurative and classic-like style. He is not interested in reproducing reality. He rather wants to create fantastic scenarios, personal and idealized worlds that, however, are never totally false but are placed in perfect balance between what is real and what is imagined, all elevated by a remarkable aesthetic sense and a formal rigor that probably derive from his previous experience as a fashion photographer.
Artist: Exhibition details:
Artist: ANGELO CRICCHI
Title: - IEROGAMIA - La guarigione attraverso il mito e il rito
Curator: Gianluca Marziani
Ceramic production: Sonia Mascioli
Model for vase images: Giuditta Sin
Garden creation: Dylan Tripp
Dates: May 31st, 2023 to September 12th, 2023
Opening: Tuesday, May 30th - 6 pm to 9 pm
Venue: VISIONAREA Art Space - Auditorium della Conciliazione
Address: Piazza Pia, 1 - Rome
Tickets: free admission
E-mail: info@visionarea.org
Website: http://www.visionarea.org
Website:https://www.angelocricchi.com
