JAGO. The exhibition

The dialogue between the present and the past, ancient Rome and classical statuary revisited in a modern key by Jago, in the cradle of Roman classicism at Palazzo Bonaparte.

Jago. The Exhibition, Palazzo Bonaparte, Roma (photo by Carlotta Ceccarini)

Artistar of our century, Jacopo Cardillo, known as Jago, exhibits his marble sculptures at Palazzo Bonaparte, from 12th of March to 3th of July 2022, a level immediately above Bill Viola's videos, opening a dialogue with the Vittoriano that can be glimpsed the windows that open onto Piazza Venezia, thus comparing the past and the present. A dualism constantly present in the Jago's art. Marble sculptures in a Michelangelo style, whose gazes follow those of the visitor, as if they were modern Mona Lisa. By exploiting the means of communication, he brings a large public closer to classical statuary revisited in a contemporary key. It reduces complexity to the essence, shaping marble, a noble material linked to tradition, but which Jago revisits in a purely contemporary way. Through the videos in which the marble is shaped by the artist himself, it is possible to understand the work that lies behind his artistic imagination.

2016 is the year in which Jago is consecrated as an artist with his first solo exhibition in Rome which allowed him to enter the world of international art. The public approaches Memories with a selection of works in Carrara marble.

Jago's first experience in the world of art is dictated by the bond with nature, the stones that the water plows through are shaped by the artist's hands, becoming "a discourse on the meaning of life".

The main symbol of life is the heart and its heartbeat transformed into a work of art thanks to technology, 3D prints.

Jago then comes to stage the Renaissance of the third millennium with the marble bust of Pope Benedict XVI, the effigy of God on earth and with the Venus, which has abandoned all classical seduction and has been subtracted from any traditional meaning, showing itself naked with her flaws, but with a still proud gaze and a veiled grace still present.

Jago breaks any traditional theme by sending one of his works into space, The First Baby, a tiny sculpture signed like Duchamp with his own fingerprint.

Jago. The Exhibition ends with the two most recent works: the dramatic Pietà, an allegory of the awareness of the loss and pain of a father, alongside the evocative Veiled Son, a single block of marble sculpted live, which is the spokesperson for the massacres of the Mediterranean.

Experiments on nature and on matter that lead Jago to create characters and objects so realistic in the folds of the body and in the expressions of the face that they look like human beings in flesh and blood. An imaginary that deals with memory and time, made contemporary in unique artistic forms of its kind, in which the community can reflect itself with its own defects and weaknesses.

With Jago, Bernini and Canova's marble becomes a social icon and a powerful means of communication on modern social and political issues.

"It is in the last centimeter of work that you make the difference, it is in that last centimeter of possibility that the sculpture is created" (Interview on "Il Fatto Quotidiano")

Photos and videos made by Carlotta Ceccarini