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DRUID, And still they don't believe it

Exhibiting from March 22 2024 at Gallery Hotel Art

Curated by Valentina Ciarallo

Once again, the Gallery Hotel Art promotes a creative dialogue between contemporary art, Florentines, and its international guests with a new exhibition featuring Emanuele Napolitano, known as Druid, and his first solo show in the city titled ‘And still they don’t believe it’, curated by Valentina Ciarallo.

Druid, born in 1976, is a visual artist, painter, video-maker, and director who, with his vibrant colors and original strokes, portrays everyday life in a surprising way. His female figures, protagonists of the now famous cartoon-style drawings, irreverent periodic contents of his Instagram profile, and also part of this retrospective, symbolize his subtle and punctual interpretation of behaviors and social relations of our times, generating in the viewer an inevitable feeling of bittersweet solidarity.

The series of paintings dedicated to the twelve zodiac signs welcoming guests on the main wall of the lobby are a visual horoscope where symbols and faces are reflected in an evocative duality of colors and shapes: each painting is accompanied by a prediction about individual destiny, expressly formulated by the artist, fueling the idea of the sign stereotype, according to which the stars’ position significantly influences our personality to the extent of affecting our mood and changing the sense of the day.

The artist then focuses, in the most intimate part of his production, on details of domestic environments that serve as a backdrop to his characters often portrayed as couples and alternating with imaginary settings. His figures here belong to a poetically symbolic and dreamy time, yet extremely modern like a theater of memory merging with that of real life.

For the first time at the Gallery Hotel Art, we find his collection of over thirty vintage ceramic plates, created specifically for the occasion as a tribute to the long tradition of Tuscan ceramics. With unusual shapes and dimensions, the series of tableware adorn the entire wall of the Sala Cha, evoking a traditional and familiar environment such as that of the traditional kitchen and heart of conviviality. The bottom of each plate bears a phrase or an ironic drawing in full “Druid” style. And the written word, inspired by observing and listening to the others, becomes the key to his aesthetics.

The title of the exhibition is freely inspired by a famous song by The Smiths from the early ’80s, “The boy with the storm in his side.”

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