Galleria Tiziana Di Caro presents the first solo exhibition in its spaces by Lucas Memmola (Bari, 1994), entitled Melancolia, opening on Saturday 6 April 2024, at 19:00.

The exhibition project includes a series of paintings created in 2024, and the title is clearly inspired by Albrecht Dürer’s 1514 engraving, known for the astonishing collection of symbols with many iconographic meanings, the synthesis of which reflects a feeling of profound sadness, dejection, distrust: a feeling of helplessness from which nostalgia arises.

Lucas Memmola’s solo exhibition collects images of tension and energetic charge that have to do with our civilization.

The first painting we come across represents the sun: we have access to the representation of our star, which actually prevents direct vision due to the intensity of its light. This vision hides a misunderstanding. In fact, what we see is not the sun but the representation of the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. The objective data of the image thus leads into a surprising dimension, i.e. not that of ‘rebirth’ usually associated with the sun, but that of a destructive force which does not generate but rather annihilates.

An urban landscape fills the second room. The picturesque feeling that dominates much of painting until the 19th century is replaced by an acute tension. Here we have a nocturne, but it could also be an apocalyptic moment. We don’t see any particular details other than the presence of piled-up buildings among which skyscrapers stand. The formal reference is borrowed from cinema, so what we see is the result of a replicated vision, filtered through the imagination of others.

And then there is a human figure. A female nude, whose posture evokes the classical canon and a chiastic rhythm that sees her leaning on one leg, leaving the other flexed. Yet, there is nothing else ancient about this figure, because all the other elements place her perfectly in this time, in a context that is anything but idealistic, because the individual today is driven by the need to modify his own body, highlighting its possible changeability.

There is nothing better than a galloping horse to represent the energetic charge, the element on which Memmola built this body of work. The figure is once again an iconographical classic, incredibly dynamic in its representation. The horse is featured as it moves forth eagerly towards the viewer, slightly lowering its head as if to emphasize the effort made to pull off the final stretch of its race.

Starting from existential assumptions, Melancolia crosses the universe of genre painting, insisting on the essential familiarity that every observer has with the most traditional themes of art history. They are simple, clear, known, but they bear emotional and social tensions which are subjective yet universal, as they respond to a specific need of the human being: to remain aware that historic recurrence is not only a philosophical theory, but the rule that has always governed the progress of the human trail. Net of any alternative.