LVX ILLVMINAT LVCEM

From June 29 to September 10, 2024, the artist Diego Esposito returns to Teramo, his hometown, with the widespread exhibition titled LVX ILLVMINAT LVCEM, curated by Marco Meneguzzo and Aldo Iori.

The LVX ILLVMINAT LVCEM exhibition project, organized by the Rotary Club Teramo Est in collaboration with Galleria Allegra Ravizza of Lugano, takes its name from a ceramic sculpture conceived by the artist for the Teramo Cathedral. It includes the placement of historical and newly created site-specific works, as well as a permanent piece.

Five city locations, chosen for their spiritual, social, and cultural significance, will be involved: L’ARCA (Laboratory for Contemporary Arts), the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, the Civic Art Gallery, the ‘Melchiorre Delfico’ Regional Library, and the park of the Municipal Villa, which will host the permanent work.

After nearly fifty years of residing in Milan and Venice, and extended stays for study and exhibitions worldwide, Diego Esposito strengthens his deep connection with Teramo through the relationship between his work and its location. In the past, Esposito has exhibited in Teramo in solo (the last one in 2003) and group exhibitions.

Spatial issues have always been present in the artist’s work since the installations conceived for the University of Teramo starting in 1991 with O-blu and Cascata in 1996; later, between 2000 and 2001, with Naos; and the most recent, in 2014, for the Aula Magna of the Faculty of Law with Scale di Colore Suono del Tempo in the modern campus of Coste Sant’Agostino.

Locations and Works

L’ARCA (Laboratory for Contemporary Arts)
Paintings
For the exhibition space at Largo San Matteo in the center of Teramo, the artist has planned a special installation consisting of a corpus of ten large and medium-sized works in relation to each other. Historical works, some of which are new to Italy, will be displayed alongside new ones created specifically for the exhibition.

Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, Piazza Duomo
LVX ILLVMINAT LVCEM, 2023-24, majolica and gold, 35x38x5 cm
In a chapel of the Cathedral, the work LVX ILLVMINAT LVCEM will be placed on a linen cloth. This piece was made at Ceramiche Biagioli La Mastro Giorgio in Gubbio (Pg). The ceramic echoes the dimensions of a stone on the facade of the Teramo Cathedral, with the inscription in Roman epigraphic style set against a gold background, paying homage to the golden luminosity of the large polyptych by the Venetian Jacobello del Fiore from 1439. The Renaissance work links Teramo's culture to the city of Venice, where Diego Esposito lived for many years, and whose light and position between East and West have been a constant reference for his work.

‘Melchiorre Delfico’ Regional Library, Via Delfico 16
Paper Works
In the eight display cases located in the inner cloister of the 18th-century Palazzo Delfico, paper works will be displayed. These unique works include travel journals, notebooks of sketches, and watercolors created for specific occasions or readings of poetic or philosophical texts. Some of these works will be donated to the library. Two watercolor pieces will be placed on the wall adjacent to the monumental stairs.

Civic Art Gallery, Viale Giovanni Bovio, 1
Art is Always Contemporary / Traces in Teramo, 2024, mosaic, 40x80 cm
This work is inspired by the recent discovery of a Roman-era building on Via Sant’Antonio, which features various mosaic stone pavements. One of these pavements, notable for its strong and unusual geometric abstraction reminiscent of the early 20th-century Neoplasticism movement, is of particular interest to Diego Esposito. A replica of a fragment of the mosaic will be recreated with similar colored tesserae and compared with a similar mosaic made by the artist using white tesserae. They will be placed together in a room of the Civic Art Gallery, highlighting the contemporaneity of experiences distant in time.

Finally, in July, a new large permanent sculptural work, Mappa celeste, designed and created specifically for the park of the Municipal Villa in Teramo, will be installed. Previously, his work Naos was placed in the park during the Exempia 2 exhibition in 2002 and now relocated at the University of Teramo, where other permanent works and the extensive decoration of the Aula Magna from 2016 can be visited in the modern campus of Coste Sant’Angelo at the Faculty of Law.