Till Megerle's Exhibition at Acappella Gallery Explores Bodies as Linguistic Intensifiers

Till Megerle's exhibition at Acappella in Naples presents drawings and paintings where bodies function as intensifiers and tensioners, pushing beyond representational limits. The works feature figures in contorted postures with stretched or compressed limbs, often captured in fleeting moments resembling film stills. These bodies draw from diverse sources including art history, contemporary internet rap culture, and the artist's familial environment. In ecstatic experiences, such as repeated utterances of the word "gravity," figures abandon their representational existence to become intense. The exhibition conceptually connects to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's analysis of Kafka's minoritarian language use, where linguistic elements like misused prepositions and reflexive pronouns create tension. W.G. Sebald notably marked this chapter in his copy of "Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature," highlighting Kafka's approach to German language in Prague with its poverty of words and faulty syntax. Megerle's figures perform and frequently overextend their bodily existence through suspended movements and gaping mouths from which a-signifying tonalities emerge. The exhibition explores how both language and bodies can be pushed toward their extremes, moving toward a reversible aldilà or aldiquà.