MARIA PIA DAIDONE
BLACKCOPPERGOLD
works between the sacred and the profane
Castel Nuovo - Maschio Angioino
Naples, from Feb. 4th to 26th

Another round, another run. No lack of novelty in this exhibition by Maria Pia Daidone in Naples, hosted in the luminous Sala della Loggia of the very central Maschio Angioino, which has long achieved the status of a metropolitan monument. Here some of Daidone's masterful works summarize and unfold, in suitably nuanced accents, symptomatic figural relationships, sequences of diverse animals, zoomorphic essences, feathered idols, pseudoiconic labels, aniconic traces; works that are admirably suited for fantastic and eloquent digressions.
This zoomorphic collection reflects several significant aspects in the new grid of symbols informing Daidone's artistic identity, which over time has opened up to new interpretive horizons and reference points, as well as acquiring new nuances of expression. In her own concise words:

"My urgency to discover the animal world began in the early years of 2000. Starting from a careful analysis, I eventually developed an individual creative production inspired by reality, but enlivened, synthesized, and, sometimes, treated ironically. The investigation of nature is fundamental. It is important to study nature with the eye of the heart and the mind to discover what it conceals. My research phase was almost concluded with my exhibition at the Zoology Museum of the Federico II University in Naples.
My present investigation is centered on the study of materials. I chose copper, cardboard, and plexiglas. The first because it is malleable, and because it reminds us of the sacred, gives out energy, and has the brightness of gold. With proper working, the second completely loses its identity and turns into something else. Plexiglas, used as a cover, enhances other materials and crystallizes them in a timeless atmosphere. The exhibition has given me the right stimuli to create symbolic themes employing new materials.

Splendid meshes of small tesserae of copper sheet metal; cardboard sheets, pressed and covered with gilt and copper color effects, partly jutting and partly overlaid with transparent elements; very thoughtfully assembled birds, sliding and fluttering; wooden boxes and suitcases full of old books, minimal objects, and memories; cardboard panels highlighted in black and gold; compositions of miniature tables held up by vertical rectangular plexiglas elements; very unusual, extremely distorted chairs, highlighted by opportune and reasonable distributions of fractal alchemies and simple figurative motifs; terracottas touched with clots of black and red, graced with unlikely flights of light-winged birds; thus do the nerodaidone and orodaidone series, as well as other works, prepare and program soft, intriguing and pleasurable seductions of sense.
With her exploits of creative genius, Maria Pia Daidone has managed to single out, through strata and substrata, certain choice colors and a variety of animal figures, with linguistic grace and imaginative density. Magical abbreviations resound in the mirror of memory and are merged, with creative urgency, in the new set of signs the artist has gradually thought up, evolved and defined during her long career.
Her boxes and suitcases of memory fuel an unconscious production of travel images, memories, and literary migrations. The small suitcases indulge the wish to travel, to discover the world. They stand out as synthetic expressions of a gigantic imagination.
Maria Pia Daidone's stylistic versions intend to act as a filter for a measured management of graphical relief and vibrant saliencies, and set dimensions for her substantial inventive genius.
Her unusual chairs - which host silhouettes and, on the seat, terracottas, condensed in black or synthesized in red, graced with unexpected flights of small birds - speak an object-based language with innovative domestic overtones.
Her semi-rigid sheets, arranged to form a cardboard sod with a papier-maché layer, accept scratched footprints and traces and signals of exotic, unusual and diverse animal images, as well as dry chromatic juxtapositions of gold, black and copper. The gold reverberates health, sanity, and the embracing of life. Black highlights the other colors and the presence or absence of signs; it is thus a determined mirror from which emotions are detached. Copper, with its warm tones, extends out in well-tempered surfaces.
The artist's latest pictorial and plastic realizations juxtapose the sacred and the profane. They incorporate the vertigo of modern times and, at the same time, evoke the mythical dimensions of antiquity.
Her light, metabolized, meaning-bearing tesserae of copper, are interpolated as signifying, symbolic elements of social interpretation and communication. The texture of each copper frame is a thin tracing, curled, rippled, embossed and wavy, on which rhythmic motifs slide. The confined edges tickle and graze one another, sophisticatedly arranged in a carefully laid-out grid, a flattering garment for a phantasmic body. One could speak of a sheet of woven copper. A sheet that may seem to threaten an aesthetical overdose, but at a more careful gaze turns out to be a curtain, unveiling a magnetic essence of undeniable influence and pervasive charm, which completely engrosses the soul and the mind.
The controlled boundaries and matching joins of the copper tesserae show icastic detail and an all-embracing chromatic system. Cardboard, string, gold, horizontally arranged copper threads, running half-parallel and close together, form a fabric designed to incorporate tools for investigation and informal rendering that are as humble as they are valuable.
The artist's skilful hand arranges frayed, transversal and contrasting materials into a craggy geography reflecting a life course with shadows and lights, but also a sophisticated interpretation of everyday life, an aesthetic guide to the contemporary, spread out in exquisite elegance. Her variegated range of aesthetic determinations consecrates an exemplarily designed visual plafond, incorporating ancient and modern forms in its diverse and multiple extension.
Maria Pia Daidone has no intention to stop. She is already planning new exhibitions. She challenges her creativity every-day, projecting future outlets for it, picturing in her head exhibition itineraries and mises-en-scène, already thought out in detail.

Maurizio Vitiello
Naples, January 2011