In the year that marks the centenary of his birth, a new exhibition tells Pier Paolo Pasolini through comics with different interpretations: tender or raw, dreamlike or explicit, furious or spiritual
After last year’s big exhibition Women In Comics (exciting review dedicated to the great female names in international comics), Building Merulana back to “chew” comics. And she does it by shining the spotlight on one of the most emblematic figures of our culture: Pier Paolo Pasolini, committed and controversial intellectual already at the center of numerous events on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. The exhibition will condense and reinterpret the production and thinking of the iconic Bolognese thinker in a comics key. Conscious heart – Pier Paolo Pasolini told in the Comicsthe ambitious anthology that will open its doors, right in the halls of the historic Capitoline building, on August 26th.
THE ARTISTS ON SHOW WITH A CONSCIOUS HEART AT PALAZZO MERULANA
Curated by Stefano Piccoli and produced by ARF! Festival, the exhibition – open until 2 October -, presents over eighty original works created by some of the most prestigious names in national comics. These are tables taken from four graphic novels inspired by the life of the great director and novelist, observed and drawn under different interpretations: tender or crude, dreamlike or explicit, furious or spiritual. Authors of the four publications, and therefore protagonists of the exhibition, are Davide Toffolo (present with preparatory sketches and prints related to the comic Pasolini of 2005), Giuseppe Palumbo (on display with a series of drawings from Pasolini 1964), Elettra Stamboulis And Gianluca Costantini (guests with a selection of tables from Pasolini’s secret diary) And Gianluca Maconi (author of the most recent The Pasolini crime, the graphic novel dedicated to the bulky shadows that still stand out on the disappearance of the intellectual). The visitor experience will also be enriched by some short stories of Massimo Giacon And Danilo Maramottiand from a series of illustrations and portraits by Milo Manara, Andrea Serio, Francesco Ripoli, Leila Mazzocchi And Alice Iuri. Finally, a summary of the exhibition project will include weekly talks and meetings aimed at deepening the figure of Pasolini through the words of the various authors on display.
THE CURATOR’S COMMENT OF THE EXHIBITION CONSCIOUS HEART
“The comic exhibition on Pasolini was born from a very simple idea”, Commented to Artribune the curator Stephen Little ones. “For the centenary of Pasolini’s birth we were observing a great flourishing of initiatives dedicated to him: film retrospectives, literary inserts, theatrical reviews, poetry readings, talks and meetings with big names in the Italian cultural scene but, precisely, no one he was still narrating through this powerful medium that is comics – which, moreover, is at the center of the cultural debate as never before and is enjoying a great deal of attention from the national media and institutions. The anthological exhibition that we will present at Palazzo Merulana only ‘collects’ the many works that, over the years, the world of Italian comics has produced; through different authors and visions, through different editorial formats; then through a rich selection of original plates, illustrations, exclusive prints and sketches with the aim of telling Pasolini in the round, as an artist and as a man“.
PIER PAOLO PASOLINI AND THE CARTOON
“I cannot say if Pasolini’s thought has actual analogies with comics, meaning them as a direct relationship link.”Continues Piccoli. “It goes without saying that Pasolini read ‘his’ contemporary languages and how. He interpreted them with his stylistic code. The very eclecticism of his work is a clear demonstration of this. So, in the same way that he also chose directing as a medium, he could easily have written a graphic novel to express that thought. The fact remains that remembering it today, even as a passing of the baton to the new generations, is something fundamental both in cultural and purely artistic terms. From this point of view, probably, comics have a greater ability to reach a young target, which perhaps would even find a long black and white film ‘bumper’ with absolutely different times compared to the pressing rhythms it is now used to in terms of use. visual. Ditto a book of poems. But we will discover it along the way, thanks to the range of visitors that we will be able to register during the weeks in which the exhibition will be open to the public. And during the face-to-face meetings with the artists, scheduled every Thursday afternoon in September“.
– Alex Urso
Art events in progress in Rome