Description
Mario Amura. Napoli Explosion. Italian and English Vers. Vol. 2 Napoli Explosion exhibition
Mario Amura: Napoli Explosion Vol. 2, a limited signed-edition art book of 500 copies, published to coincide with the extraordinary exhibition-event Napoli Explosion, staged at the Real Albergo dei Poveri as the closing event of the celebrations marking the 2,500th anniversary of Naples. The volume brings together 92 photographic paintings created by Mario Amura over the course of more than fifteen years, accompanied by critical texts by the curator Sylvain Bellenger, Erri De Luca, Serafino Murri, and Salvatore Settis.
Napoli Explosion exhibition
The window of my bedroom overlooked Mount Vesuvius, and every morning, with reverence, I whispered a good morning to it as one would address a slumbering person, afraid of awakening them. The volcano is a living presence for anyone living at its slopes. For over 12 years, on New Year's Eve, my team and I ascend Mount Faito, a mountain overlooking the Bay of Naples, to capture the extraordinary choreography of lights and colors produced by fireworks all around Vesuvius. Through this superstitious and propitiatory ritual, the people of Naples welcome the new year. The image of the black and silent silhouette of the volcano submerged by the cacophony of fireworks' colors seemed to me a representation that needed to be explored seriously and viewed from different perspectives.
Over the years, the project has evolved into an experimentation of new forms of writing with light, using a unique color palette provided by the hundreds of thousands of fireworks exploding simultaneously. Over time, Napoli Explosion has become a work in search of the feeling of light.
