Marcello Jori | Pensiero Dipinto in Movimento Scritto

Marcello Jori
Pensiero Dipinto in Movimento Scritto
Opening: Friday, 4th October 2024, from 4:00 to 9:00 pm
Until: 15th November 2024
Exhibition venue: Casa Di Marino – Via Monte di Dio, 9, 80132 – Naples
Opening hours: Monday – Saturday 11.00 am – 1.00 pm / 3.00 – 7.00 pm

The Umberto Di Marino Gallery is pleased to present Marcello Jori’s first solo exhibition at Casa Di Marino, entitled Pensiero Dipinto in Movimento Scritto. This exhibition follows two previous solo shows, Supereroi and Jori Di Napoli, organized by the gallery at its former location in Giugliano. Both exhibitions, focused on Jori’s painting practice, already hinted at a narrative approach that the artist would later develop through his “painted writings.”
This new project is entirely dedicated to that aspect of Jori’s work, which, through drawing and comics, has succeeded in telling universal stories on multiple levels. Stories that today, especially among younger audiences, find new vitality, offering fresh insights into a medium like comic drawing, which has too often been relegated to “the lower circles of Hell.” For the first time, this project aims to stage the complexity—at times disturbing, absurd, visionary, and erudite—of Jori’s practice. The exhibition, which will take place in both the gallery and domestic spaces of Casa Di Marino, will resemble a small retrospective, reflecting on a gesture that Jori no longer sees as mere comic drawing but as Pensiero Dipinto in Movimento Scritto (“Painted Thought in Written Movement”), which also serves as the exhibition’s title.
The show traces the evolution of Jori’s work, from his early panels created in the ‘70s and ‘80s with the Valvoline group for magazines like Linus and Frigidaire, through the aggressive and provocative tone of comics like Feto e Carletto, where a baby and a fetus, behaving like adults, wreak havoc on the city in search of the lost maternal womb.
From the subversive, experimental, and ironic nature of his early works, the exhibition will also focus on the brightly lit, hyper-realistic panels he created for Per Lui magazine in the ‘80s, a pivotal stage leading to his large, dreamlike, mythological narratives, always tinged with irony and provocation, published by Rizzoli, such as Lo Straordinario Viaggio del Mondo and La Storia Dipinta dell’Arte. With the absurd ambition of writing the history of the world and of art, the artist brings this vision to life, fully aware that it remains a partial, personal, sometimes abstract, and deliberately altered history—both mythical and legendary.
It is a complex vision of the world and the arts that Jori offers the viewer, including through his own voice. Over the years, Jori has often read his own texts from the panels, adding a more intimate and personal tone to the stories. Just as happened with Le Predicazioni, read at Emi Fontana in Milan in the early 2000s, at the exhibition’s opening, Marcello Jori will read to the public some of the most iconic passages from his history of art.
Through panels, original manuscripts, preparatory sketches, cover variants, and monumental portions of drawings on canvas, the exhibition will attempt to give form to the complex universe envisioned by Jori, painted through the movement of shapes, light, and writing. Over the years, this movement has come to life not only through his works but also through art magazines and other publications. His use of Flash Art as a comic periodical remains iconic, with each issue featuring a new chapter of La Storia Dipinta dell’Arte.
All these materials, along with sketches for objects created in collaboration with Alessi, cover designs for albums by singers like Patty Pravo, and drawings for fashion advertising campaigns featured in magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair, as well as the original books of è Pinocchio, realized with Mazzoli gallery in Modena, and Gli Albi dell’Avventura produced with the Marconi Foundation in Milan, will be exhibited without any attempt to establish hierarchies. After nearly 50 years, Marcello Jori has finally given a definition to this entire body of work: Pensiero Dipinto in Movimento Scritto. A new life begins for the artist!