“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” I. Kant

Vistamare is pleased to present Una mostra straordinaria, Lorenzo Scotto di Luzio’s first solo show with the gallery.

The exhibition takes its inspiration from “The Crooked Timber of Humanity”, an essay in which the philosopher Isaiah Berlin compares man to a “crooked timber” devising theories that are too “unbending”. Berlin’s text explores the complex relationship between human nature and the idealistic visions that philosophy, politics and religion have constructed for us over the centuries. Serving as a sort of hypertext for the exhibition, Berlin’s ideas provide the starting point from which Scotto di Luzio’s artistic research aims to reveal the power relations that shape the world around us. The connecting thread running through these new works, which include drawings, installations and kinetic sculptures, is the pungent irony with which the artist launches his reflection on contemporary society. The subjects we encounter here are grotesques, from mysterious origins, powerful and fragile. At the entrance, in the gallery’s main room, we are welcomed by a monumental sculpture in polystyrene. The fragility of its material is in contrast with the monumental character of the piece: a male figure lifts a hand to his hat in greeting, while his lopsided body seems to be marching off towards something. Conjured up by Scotto di Luzio’s imagination, this giant-like figure – a character from a military parade – precipitates into the gallery as if stepping straight out of the pages of a story set in 1930s in Berlin. The sculpture introduces us to a series of grotesque figures in charcoal on cotton canvas, drawn in delicate, undulating lines at odds with the mounting and violent tension that seems to pervade them. In a further allusion to the idea of the crooked timber, which at this point is no longer merely a metaphorical image, a mechanical sculpture slowly unrolls a spool of wire, bending a jointed stick in various directions. Things are brought to a close with a large banner faithfully reproducing the advertising slogan for a department store which the artist must have encountered somewhere: a faceless organization announcing that it has our happiness at heart.

Lorenzo Scotto di Luzio was born in Pozzuoli (Naples) in 1972. The artistic research of Scotto di Luzio emerges from the very beginning as a transversal practice using different media as photography, video, installation drawing. Among the exhibitions: “Le voci della sera”, Vistamare MIlano, (2022); “In bocca a te ogni cosa muore”, Kunst Meran, Merano (2017); “Pane al Pane”, Fondazione Morra Greco, Napoli (2015); “Persona in meno”, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino (2010); “Untitled”, Ancient & Modern Gallery, Londra (2008); “Tableaux Vivant”, Museo Madre, Napoli (2007). He lives and works in Berlin.