Antonello Scotti’s ‘Mare o cielo verso (cap) napoli est’ at Capnapoliest

Key facts

• Project title: 'mare o cielo verso (cap) napoli est'
• Artist: Antonello Scotti, born in Pozzuoli in 1961, based in Naples
• Curator: Vera Vita Gioia
• Critical text by Marcello De Masi
• Venue: Capnapoliest, an exhibition space in the Barra district of Naples, converted from a 1960s industrial shed
• Five years ago, Vera Vita Gioia transformed the family shed into Capnapoliest
• Scotti walked from Naples' historic center to the shed, finding a wall painted with irregular blue squares by workers
• The blue squares were likely painted by workers who assembled kitchen units and were Napoli fans
• First intervention: a humble chair placed before the blue wall, referencing Anselm Feuerbach's idea of solitary contemplation
• Second intervention: eight iPhone photographs printed as a 450 x 61 cm strip on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Bright White paper, displayed on tables at the entrance of the former changing room
• Two pages from Nicola Abbagnano's 1961 'Dizionario di filosofia' with entries 'comunità' and 'comunismo' in reverse alphabetical order are mounted on a wall
• The former changing room (now storage) contains objects like a curtain, sink, paint-stained buckets, tools, and a small Madonna
• Scotti works across drawing, photography, artist books, and video
• The project refuses spectacle and demands time and attention
• The blue is described as a 'secular altar' and can represent Napoli, sea, sky, horizon, pause, or breath
• Capnapoliest retains its industrial traces (blue, yellow, red, irregular surfaces)
• Marcello De Masi's text discusses caring for otherness and inhabiting the unconstructable
• Scotti seeks an 'azzurrità' (blueness) rather than a legitimized blue from art history