Maleventum

Gianluca Capozzi: Maleventum

April 19- July 19, 2014

Curated by Raul Zamudio

GiamArt Contemporanea

Vitulano, Italy

Maleventum is a solo exhibition of Gianluca Capozzi that will take place in Vitulano, Benevento, Italy. Consisting of painting, work-on-paper, video, and installation, the title is culled from two sources. One comes from Benevento’s ancient Roman description: Maleventum, which translates as “site of bad events.” Maleventum was considered so ominous that its name was changed in antiquity to something more benign: Beneventum, and finally from its Latin name to its current nomenclature as Benevento. The other allusion in the exhibition’s title is more contemporary, for it comes verbatim from the similarly named album by the Italian death metal band, Opera IX. 

Maleventum’s historical description was based on numerous factors concurrent with, and post ancient Rome. One entails the violent, bloody battles that took place in the expansion of the Roman Republic. Later in the sixth century AD, the Germanic Lombards seized Beneventum and although they eventually would adopt Catholicism, their burgeoning reign brought the worship of faunal pagan gods and rites that would rub up against Christendom. These perceived heresies initiated Benevento’s present-day myth and folklore as a place steeped in witchery and sorcery. The exhibition uses these sources as curatorial foil to investigate the uncanny dimension of the everyday, occult conspiracy theories, crypto-fascist politics, and the cult of personality.