CURA.

Napoli is the very essence of maximalism. The folklore, the Vesuvio, the southern aesthetics are overloading the city with an energy of chaos and mystery. It’s in this context that Joan Jonas and Ryan Sullivan are presenting two solo shows at Zweigstelle Capitain VII, the temporary space of Galerie Gisela Capitain in Naples, located in Palazzo Degas, in the heart of the historic center of the city. The building is a vibrant reminiscence of a grandiose aristocratic space with high moulded ceilings and painted ceramic tiles on its floor, testimonies of the many stories and lives lived.

Joan Jonas, 88 years old, has by now developed an outstanding capacity to transport anyone into her inner world in an instant, even from the busy streets of Napoli. For this exhibition, the iconic pioneer artist from New York is re-staging, in a very personally curated way, the work Volcano Saga (1985) alongside site-specific installations, a series of drawings and paintings. The assemblage with wooden display panels reclining against the Palazzo’s wall offers layers of reading into the immersive and poetic work and presents the viewer with the depth and pluralism of the artist’s complex practice. The lucky few who have been able to attend the opening could encounter Jonas herself reading some extracts from Rachel Carson’s The Edge of the Sea (1955), one of her central inspirations as well as a literary phenomenon for ecological awareness.

The central work of the show, the film Volcano Saga, is inspired by Icelandic mythology and stars Tilda Swinton in a love story, with her enigmatic aura hovering around eruption scenes and special effects. The film conveys all sorts of emotions in a subtle and delicate way. As the slightly faded images unfold, projected on the wall, the magic of Jonas’ fascination for the resilience of nature and animals starts to make sense. As her peer Donna Haraway says in Storytelling for Earthly Survival, “It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories,” and Jonas couldn’t offer us a more sensible and clever interpretation of the consciousness of the living world that surrounds us.

The exhibition continues at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, a biological research institute built in 1847, also hosting the Napoli’s aquarium with an architecture frozen in time as it remains unchanged today. In this quirky off-space with tacky blue lights, Jonas presents her celebrated fish drawings, in comparison with a selection made by Jonas herself of scientific watercolours from the Historical Archives. The drawings seem to be floating around the almost decaying aquariums. A handwritten note, “They Come to us Without a Word”, the title of her Venice Biennale exhibition in 2015, echoes the silence of the fishes around. An eerie experience that invites us to go inward and meditate on climate, nature and where the obsession of Jonas with this recurring subject lies.

Finally, this presentation reminds us that movement in Jonas’ work is omnipresent and intuitive, a heritage of her earlier performance work, as well as the practice of re-staging, intending to go back to a piece and revivify the work. In the exhibition, we find movement embodied through the installation, giving a lively spatial geometry to the room. But we also find movemen in the practice of drawing and watercolour, which bridge seamlessly to Ryan Sullivan’s dynamic and luminous abstract paintings presented in the next room.

Sullivan’s work captivates the viewer as one dives into the complex images evoking nature, movement and forces. The paint is indeed whirling against the canvas and ends with the frame, as if to highlight the contrast between restraint and uncontrollable wilderness. There is a tender touch and a profoundness to those landscapes created with an urban as well as earthy and even oceanic palette. Reinterpreting nature, the multi-layered images intertwine perfectly with Jonas’ narratives, with Napoli as a theatrical background brimming with mysteries and wisdom.