Terre d’acqua

6 October - 24 November 2019
venue: Castello Estense e Torre Abbate - Mesola (FE)
Curated by Maria Rita Bentini
opening hours:  Until 31 October 2019 from Tuesday to Sunday 9.30 a.m. - 12.30 p.m. and 3 p.m. - 6 p.m.; from 1 November 2019 to 12 January 2020: from Tuesday to Sunday 9.30 a.m. - 12.30 p.m. and 2.30 p.m. - 5.30 p.m.; closed on Mondays
free admission 
Opening: 29 September 2019 at 11 a.m. Castello Estense, Piazza Umberto 1°. Mesola (FE)
 

Waters, green earth, sky, and within the living immensity in the landscape of the Po Delta, the light. This is the thought pervading with emotion the exhibition project of the artist Felice Nittolo, from Ravenna but of Campania origin, created for Mesola. A project that invites the public to make a voyage-navigation in the exhibit halls of the Estense Castle to end at Torre Abate, in the heart of the ancient lowland forest where in the past men tried to govern the power of the waters and now protect wisely a unique ecosystem, between the sea and the land. Or vice versa, because at the same time the artist calls the visitor to “take the sails” from Torre Abate, to reach the magical rooms of the Castle. The mosaic, with the preciousness of its materials and the patient execution that engages both the hand and the mind of those who perform it, for Felice Nittolo is an ancient and absolutely contemporary language. An art he discovered in Ravenna, where in the golden age the mosaic decoration became heir to the splendours of late ancient Rome and the Byzantine East, between the 5th and the 6th centuries. His grammar was immediately loved and then transgressed, as a rebellious and passionate artist as he has always been, or at least since the beginning of his journey in Romagna to today. The mosaic that Nittolo presents in this very rich review of works of the last forty years, is first of all a tessera: a precious fragment of light, gold, the intense color of Venetian enamels, the first principle of composition. But in his creative universe the mosaic is also totality, therefore gesture, action, painting and sculpture, to the point of becoming an immersive space, installation in  dialogue with places. A way of being for the artist himself, who iconically became a mosaic wearing a mosaic coat, and transfigured the mythical old Fiat Cinquecento with a dynamic covering of weaving gold, elevating it to a unique piece of design. Water lands then, a landscape of signs and magical evocations, with an invitation not only to see, but to feel: the enchantment of the sea and its rippled surface that reflects the light multiplying it with a thousand flashes, the adventure of sailing between the search for the unknown and the desire for home, looking to the future through memory. In one word, beauty.