Good afternoon. I want to deliver an academic speech today for two reasons first reason because I was just noticed
that should speak of two days ago that I didn't have really time to prepare something rigorous.
And number two, because we have had all the afternoon, all the day, and that could follow that fascinating good academic lectures.
And I think every single almost was said about to chai art, Chinese style Chinese invention.
So it would be more sort of direct to your memory because I've heard that in the show, I'm going to wait to discover a couple of minutes.
You have some works from our show in Naples presented here.
So it's a great excitement film for me as a as a curator, so I could maybe tell you a little bit about this specific adventure.
In fact, the sure side coaching in Pompeii.
Inside the volcano came from a sort of dream that I had one day visiting again and
again Pompeii and thinking about this fascinating and strange paradox of the.
A city and a body of arts. Probably the best body of antique arts and city conservative in the world and paradoxically.
Death, destruction.
Disaster being as, in fact, the best conservator of art, because without the Vince review the explosion, the eruption wouldn't happen today.
All of that probably, and also in the fascinating new archaeological museum of Naples that I'm sure all of you visited.
If not, you have to visit it. There is a fascination we could observe looking at the visitors and even as visitors, the coming of.
Facing those objects with artefacts, which are.
Which of the tragedies printed into the objects, the tragedy of of Pompeii?
So I've thought of Chad and of this. Creative destruction.
Is going to the arts and Buddhism.
And I called him thinking that within this journey into the roots of the Western artistry he had been developing all these last years.
The Topi was an essential step and immediately told me, but I always dreamed about.
I never went there, but it does. It is lacking in context, dream to me.
So it was the kitchen. It was something absolutely like something obvious.
Something had to be done here.
Then another Jordan, they started to convince the archaeological park and to convince the museum because I didn't want as a short term statement.
A temporary exhibition room because the idea was supposedly to make a dialogue, meaning a confrontation and to really creative earn.
Eventually, the confusion. For the visitors between them, the artefacts from Pompeii and the artworks made by Typekit,
so that's why you will see that we purposely try to use the replicas of some sculptures sometimes very famous from the and from the museum.
You know, do you learn in the same room as to create? The shadow of a doubt and to create that.
So.
It started by this also what we call an explosive studio, because it was important to and really good film here, something quite different from the.
Explosion so that someone seises use the two to do is art is essentially performative.
What you have said that a long time today and we thought that the Institute of Pompey,
which was the place of the spectacle, which was the stage of the performance.
Just under the volcano was absolutely the right stage to talk about this destructive creation and this problematic.
And so instead of doing one performance for one painting or something like this,
I got the idea to create a theatre stage to inhabit differentI Theatre.
We've in fact what I call an installation of explosions because it was not only one the performance like you used to do,
for example, in preview of the meeting of the process of the creation of one singular artwork.
But. The creation of 80 percent of the whole issue.
You can imagine, though, the challenge, the research.
Of creating on the stage of this amphitheatre the day before the opening of a show in
the National Archaeological Museum in 18 routes dedicated 80 percent of the show,
so that was really a way.
With the risk that the risk of the failure of union, which would have destroyed and consolidate all the process or the show because there was no plan.
We plan. And it was the best way,
and another had to demonstrate that child at heart was essentially fundamentally performative because
everything came during this what we call child and tell you to entertain the explosive in the studio.
So they use the it's that to. OK, so you see the stage and then.
The artists like either. A very complicated scene, a series of explosions which made the mayor of Pompeii telling me at the end that.
He didn't expect a second eruption of the volcano, and during his mandate is that if he would have known that we transfer to so many changes of.
You would have and and it is important to know that you will see in the in the works you will see in the rooms of the museum in the year or so.
In the exhibition, which works, you could see the the strength, the force.
Printed in these works, because. Chase performance where it is in one,
all of the preview of one filled with whodunit could not have the quantity of put a failure that we have in this and future tense.
I can admit no, because any way there is prescriptions done, it's finished.
The book is published that it was, of course, on the people.
Literally impossible. It was legally impossible.
So we pushed the border because we are artists, so we have to change a little bit the thing.
It was technically almost impossible and it was not reasonable because we had
a contract with the museum to make a show in 18 rooms and we were taking the.
It was like gambling or something. Everything was made on this stage in 15 minutes.
But with the preparation and the control, of course, of of China and a foot or so that it was for charging even at midnight the day before,
it was good and we were still cringing over the last preparation and things that in fact,
the great artists for me as the definition of the great artist not just invents or reinvents,
is art that child and you have all demonstrated that today is definitive great artist for this parameter.
But the great artist is also someone who can copy everyone but himself and us to not only reinvent,
but to fail to push the body of his heart to go out of the comfort zone.
The established artists would be after some,
and we know something that is in a sort of comfort and repeating the feeling of being at the end of the day, the copy of themselves.
And here I accepted it to face something quite impossible, something it couldn't control.
Totally. And the whole show that was made on the stage in an explosive studio like you never did before.
You have lots more of images in the very nice artist book.
Very, very impressive artist group shot you made after the show with photos from the book, but you have many more.
There is an English version with Chinese, this Italian version published by Stephen Daldry, where you could see a lot of info.
So the day after. We are them in the waiting rooms of the National Archaeological Reserve, both within the room,
and I have to think particularly Paolo Julia Renee, the director, because he accepted it.
I have twin sister interviewed you at Yale. Yes.
But he accepted it to hang in some walls from Pompeii to having the child in dialogue with in the various rooms.
And it was the. What I said about the confusion and the stupid, and we played also of the scale,
and so in every room, the couple of examples, you will have the traces of the performance.
Exhibiting that all along the museum.
So this is a couple of images just to show you.
I wish it was displayed. China also accepted and got the idea to work on other mediums that the canvas inspired by the artefacts.
You saw in the resumes, so instead of going only with painting and sculpture,
you said we have to do also ceramics have to do glass, but you will see some incredible glass.
And that's why you are real. You have a real dialogue, so a true dialogue within the museums.
This is a plus. Painting made also during the explosion.
And you can see the result of of Visa.
And it was important also to hang in the same rooms because of being the way would be defined that
the city of images when you see it was a city full of images where you find a lot of semantics.
Life. They have security, a lot of things that you find also in Chinese work.
It's just so physical made during the expeditions to do.
And three metres canvas painting, which was the one that could see all along the jet,
which was like to stage the stage, was its canvas with the stuff of.
Which was another adventure.
We won't talk it was to hang that just above treasures of the results can imagine, but this is the middle story even in the cabinets of erotic.
Paintings. And we see some services again.
So I want to thank you again for his trust and for this wonderful achievement.
We have many other projects together that would be for those position to tell you and I've got to wait to see no, the the show.
And I hope that with a little background. But this bumpy adventure will appreciate even more into the works you will see there.
Thank you.