"Ab Ovo – The Mystery of the Beginning" on display in Montoro

On Saturday 14 December, at 6:30 pm, the Pinacoteca d'Arte Contemporanea Città di Montoro (PIMAC) will host the inauguration of the exhibition "Ab Ovo – Il Mistero del Principio", organised by the cultural association ‘ContemporaneaMente APS’, as part of the "Montorocontemporanea" exhibition, chaired by Gerardo Fiore and sponsored by the Municipality of Montoro.

"Birth is for everyone the first and most extraordinary experience of access to life - says Eliana Petrizzi, Artistic Director of PIMAC - And yet, Western thought has mostly focused on death as the only mystery and fundamental condition of being in the world, as well as the main attraction to mortify the joys of life; an interpretation of death that has highlighted the existential status of human Being as "being-for-death", to use Heideggerian language.
Despite the multifaceted unfolding of its many nuances, contemporary art has for decades chosen an approach to the transcendent that is more secular than religious. The topical scenes of Christian tradition are reworked in an often irreverent perspective, placed in new contexts, to convey current messages; above all to talk about the general crisis of ideals of our time.
These days, it is the theme of the Nativity that holds sway in Christmas celebrations.
The exhibition intends, however, to attempt a reading of the theme that goes beyond the original biblical story, to extend its interpretation to the more general sense of birth and rebirth, of beginning and "restarting" in a real, symbolic, cognitive, ethical and existential sense.
The multiplicity of aspects that make up our life places us before the need and urgency of a profound rethinking of the most common definition of birth.
There is no doubt that the reality of birth is today strongly present in every type of bioethical debate. But outside of this horizon, what exactly does it mean to be born and what is its original meaning?
PIMAC asked 26 contemporary artists, challenging them to provide a very personal reading or rereading of a theme of such profound relevance.
Birth, rebirth and resilience are terms to which the post-pandemic crisis has accustomed us with suffocating recurrence. But while resilience refers to the ability to return to the condition prior to the critical event that has altered a certain balance, rebirth connotes the ability to act out a change in substantial discontinuity with the past, which proves capable of liberating previously unexpressed forces and potential. Being reborn to this life in a new form implies the ability to rework the experience thanks to a knowledge of the soul that, questioning the meaning of what has been experienced, favors a transformation of one's way of organizing and decoding the existential experience of coming and staying in the world. It is a process that requires first of all to repair the wounds inflicted by destructive ideologies, by a dysfunctional environment, by emotionally frozen, anthropologically degrading, chronically distrustful existences, all in an attempt to overcome the delirium of impotence that seems to grip our time".

At PIMAC, the works of:
Elio Alfano, Antonio Bergamino, Raffaele Boemio, Antonio Caporaso, Giovanni Cavaliere, Franco Cipriano, Ugo Cordasco, Anna Crescenzi, Giovanni Cuofano, Diana D’ambrosio, Luca Daniele, Adriano Eccel, Tonia Erbino, Ellen G., Loredana Gigliotti, Angelina Kuzmanovic, Pino Latronico, Jacopo Naddeo, Arturo Pagano, Luigi Pagano, Eliana Petrizzi, Maria Sara Pistilli, Angelomichele Risi, Franco Sortini, Ernesto Terlizzi, Gennaro Vallifuoco will be exhibited

The exhibition It will be open to visitors until January 30, 2025