Tiziana Di Caro gallery is pleased to announce La notte (The Night), the second solo exhibition by Luca Gioacchino Di Bernardo at the gallery. The exhibition opens on Saturday, April 11, 2026, at 11:00 AM.

His practice manifests through drawing and painting, going through a complex imagery governed by an imaginative framework that renders metaphors of reality.

"La notte" is an exhibition dense with characters inhabiting a surreal universe, devoid of spatial or temporal references. It is a world of figures alone, where the human and the animal mingle and blur. For years, Di Bernardo has grappled with this “obsessive need to juxtapose animals and humans,” often lingering within a hybrid dimension—a process of involution and uncertainty.

The exhibition project includes two groups of drawings and two large-scale paintings produced between 2025 and 2026, opening with the series Sottobosco (Undergrowth). In nature, the undergrowth is the part of the forest environment that thrives in the shadow of the trees, often populated by animals. It is precisely these creatures that the artist portrays. In the animal portraits drawn by Di Bernardo, the boundary between human and animal is uncertain. There is nothing wild or brutal in the subjects represented; instead, the fox, the vulture, and the wild boar serve as reflections of contemporary humanity—theriomorphic creatures that evoke tenderness through their languid gazes, while simultaneously surprising the viewer with their ambiguous and sometimes seductive nature.

In the second room, two large canvases painted in India ink take center stage. Watching things burn is the melancholy depiction of a six-fingered being with a body emaciated by time and a hieratic, animalistic face, sitting on the ground leaning against a dog. Both of their gazes are lost elsewhere, and the narrative element of the title places them in an extreme situation: they are watching things burn, yet their reaction is not one of fear, but of resignation.

The second work, titled Il pittore (The Painter), is a collection of impressions in which anthropomorphic figures are placed within an unreal dimension, sublimated by a fascinating and meticulous stroke. Il pittore represents the artist's current condition: he naturally participates—through his own sensibility—in the world's events. Yet, from this wealth of experience, he only ever renders a meager fragment, as a complete portrait would prove indigestible to the patrons he serves like a waiter. The scene contains a reference to the classical myth of Actaeon and Diana.

In the final room, one encounters a constellation of Ossessioni (Obsessions), small-scale drawings distributed irregularly throughout the space. These are figures and forms rendered with a swift, seemingly uncontrolled stroke. Instinct prevails over order, creating a free and transgressive universe. The mark presents itself as a scribble, confirming that this practice can be entirely autonomous from drawing; it distances itself from the notion of "error," as it is the result of a precise will.

The party is over: the West has definitively lost all authority over the rest of the world. We all—like nocturnal animals—let our personalities wander in the darkness, hidden as we scavenge through the trash of history. What remains of us are our most miserably feral behaviors, while dreams, reminiscences, and monsters pile up within our dens.

(Luca Gioacchino Di Bernardo)
 

Luca Gioacchino Di Bernardo was born in Napoli in 1991.

In 2025, he participated in the Quadriennale di Roma, within the section curated by Francesco Bonami. In 2023, he was invited by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli to Milano Drawing Week, where he presented a solo exhibition in dialogue with a work by Gianfranco Baruchello from the Collezione Ramo. In 2019, the Fondazione Morra Greco in Napoli organized his first solo exhibition in an Italian institution.