The Museum of Contemporary Art Sicily in Catania, directed by Giuseppina Napoli, opens the new exhibition season with an exhibition dedicated to Giuseppe Barilaro, entitled Conosco i segni de l’antica fiamma. The exhibition will open with a vernissage scheduled for Friday, Sept. 26 at 8 p.m. and will remain open until Dec. 28, 2025 in the museum’s spaces. The exhibition, curated by Adriano Pricoco, Federico Rui and Ornella Trovato, aims to present to the public the artistic journey of Barilaro, whose works revolve around an investigation of matter as a privileged vehicle of memory, inner tension and search for truth.
Giuseppe Barilaro was born in Catanzaro on July 16, 1988, and today lives and works in Carrara, a city with a long tradition linked to sculpture and the working of materials. Since the beginning, the artist has been oriented toward the use of “virgin” materials, capable of offering a dual nature, resistant and ductile at the same time, with the aim of tracing in the very substance the path of life. In this research horizon, wood has assumed a central role, becoming for Barilaro the privileged medium through which to construct a personal language. The physical characteristics of this material have in fact allowed the artist to develop a visual grammar based on the constant correlation between form and substance, where the aesthetic result is never separated from the intrinsic essence of the support.
“Magical and incisive, the exhibition at MacS lays the foundation for a well-delineated and mature research. You could say that my artistic rebirth starts from MacS,” Barilaro says. “I offer a moment of reflection, whoever looks at a painting takes time, devotes a minute, a small instant to reflection and for once, perhaps, in life, decides to estrange himself from the outside world. My poetics consists of finding within the material something new every time. I tear and destroy, I cannot outline a thought or a way of working, in the imperfections of my gesture I always discover the fascination of something I do not know.”
“The decision to host Giuseppe Barilaro at MacS,” says Giuseppina Napoli (MacS Museum Director), “responds to our mission to promote artists who, through changing contemporary languages, embody the power and archetypal force of universal symbols and myths. Giuseppe Barilaro is an artist capable of transforming matter into emotion, image into pure energy. The MacS is pleased to present the exhibition of an artist who represents a rare example of mastery, technique and boldness: an author who knows how to transform, disquiet, illuminate.”
His practice is based on interventions that directly affect the body of the material, transforming it and revealing its hidden layers. Barilaro’s most frequently used techniques include wood burning, flaying and etching, along with treatment with burnt acrylics, which aims to bring to the surface the soul and energy of the represented figure. The artist thus focuses on a process of revelation, digging beyond the skin of things, in search of a truth hidden behind appearances. A tension that is in continuity with a reflection of an academic nature, as demonstrated by the work that earned him first place in the National Arts Award of the Ministry of Education, University and Research, in the Painting section. It is a paradoxical representation, entitled Christ Exposed at Confession, which challenges conventions and prejudices through direct and incisive language. With the passage of time, Barilaro gradually moved away from a narrative approach in favor of elementary forms and compositions with an almost archaic matrix.
His works thus evoke a dimension of steadfastness and sacredness, often associated with icons, yet this apparent softness is interrupted by more stark and decisive interventions. The artist strikes the support, carves and wounds it, staging an inner struggle that is reflected in the relationship with the material. The result is a permanent conflict, incapable of exhaustion, which makes each work the result of a close dialogue between the artist and the peculiarities of the material used. The substance thus becomes the absolute protagonist, a living body that carries with it the signs of time, memory and the tensions that run through it. During the vernissage, scheduled for Friday, Sept. 26 at 8 p.m., the director of MacS Giuseppina Napoli and curators Adriano Pricoco, Federico Rui and Ornella Trovato will be present, in addition to the artist. The appointment marks the beginning of an exhibition project that confirms the attention of the Catania museum to contemporary artistic research related to the dialogue between matter and visual language. For the public, it will be an opportunity to engage with a body of works that directly and radically addresses the relationship between surface and depth, visible and hidden.
Hours
Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday | 11:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.; Friday - Saturday - Sunday | 10:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.; Monday closed; *last ticket 30 minutes before closing
Tickets
Full € 7.00
Reduced | students € 5.00
Reduced | children € 3.00
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| At MacS in Catania the solo exhibition of Giuseppe Barilaro "I know the signs of the ancient flame" |
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