Diego Cibelli’s design practice is mainly based on the use of ceramics and porcelain, never to highlight technical virtuosities. These media become an open link ready to connect a variety of artistic techniques, visions and historical references.

The design culture is an act of generosity and with this value Cibelli creates his collections, understood as a real ‘motor activity of the image’. The resources are connected to each other through a skilful interplay of references and, in this accelerated intertwining, the artist designs collections in which past, present and future coexist together.

From this method Cibelli reinvigorates his imaginative power and each production becomes a narrative system capable of merging the dimension of the domestic landscape with the external territorial context.

Diego, in his artistic research, has always explored humanistic geography, interpreted as the study of territories, their history and the related sense of belonging that human beings develop, generating new spaces of the living. With the activation of a series of cultural and visual references, Cibelli build scenarios that drive themselves the design of the installations. Each scenario, composed by several sculptures, is understood as a set of tangible and intangible relationships between mankind and landscape and it is conceived as an habitat.

For the production of Festa e Catastrofe, Cibelli collaborated and coordinated a team of artisan, together they moulded and created more than thirty plasters. At the gallery there will be a collection of original sculptures, they will symbolically invite the viewer to participate in a celebration. This celebration will be divided into four main themes:

– Fireworks
– The idea of Triumph
– Commensality
– Gala representations

Totems for fireworks, the obelisk for court games, a fountain for the idea of ​​triumph and a deconstructed carriage for gala performances. Ceramic and porcelain vases dressed with laces and natural elements, food and meat in porcelain for diners, all the pieces are scattered throughout the gallery spaces. The unpublished sculptures are inspired by a study of prints that come from the ceremonials of the 1700.

Cibelli, in order to be able to design this new series of works (such as the totemic obelisks in the first and second room) started from the drawings of wooden carousels and structures for fireworks conceived by important architects, such as Antonio Niccolini, the same architects who designed buildings around the Italian territory. These references were reinterpreted and mixed by the artist with the architecture disseminated throughout the aesthetic Neapolitan landscape.

A collection of sculptures arises in which the micro dimension of the party (represented by the study of wooden structures) spreads with the macro dimension of architecture belonging to the landscape of Naples.

Diego Cibelli (Naples, 1987). In 2022 he participated to the International Biennial of Ceramic Art in Jingdezhen, China. In February 2021 had a solo show, Feed Me with Domestic Stuff, at the LAB.oratorio space of the Made in Cloister Foundation in Naples. In April 2021 he inaugurates two solo exhibitions at the Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte: The Art of Danzare Assieme and Gates at the Real Fabbrica both in Naples. In 2019 he participated to an art residency in Buenos Aires organized by the IGAV institute and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Argentina. The residency ended with the solo show at the Argentine Cultural Institute. In 2018 he participated in Mine exhibition at Bagni Misteriosi of Porta Venezia in Milan. In 2016 he exhibited at the MSU Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb and in 2013 at the Kunsterhaus Bethanien in Berlin. His work is in the collections of museums such as MAD Museum of Art and Design in New York and the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples.

Diego Cibelli, Festa e Catastrofe, partial view of the exhibition, June 2022, Alfonso Artiaco, Naples