Danilo Quintarelli. La pelle del tempo

Promoted by Roma Capitale, Assessorato alla Cultura, Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, Danilo Quintarelli’s (Avellino, 1989) exhibition at the Museo Carlo Bilotti recounts the identity, the centuries-long history and the many lives of the Villa Borghese Aranciera, now home to the museum. After experiencing its heyday in the last quarter of the 18th century, the building in fact fell into disrepair: it was rebuilt in the late 19th century and used as a shelter for citrus pots, then housed a religious institute and eventually became a municipal office building.

The paintings presented to the public, accompanied by a video made four-handedly by the author with video artist Andrea Maioli on the basis of Quintarelli’s photographs, evoke the numerous transformations the palace has undergone over the centuries, concentrating more on the layers of plaster on the walls than on the imposing structures. The artist’s paintings, informal works in which the abstraction of lines and the dominance of color allude to another dimension, bring out the “skin of time”, the concrete memory of the building’s past. It is no coincidence that the spaces that have most impressed Quintarelli are the palace’s basement, an area not open to visitors that has undergone very few modifications and that shows, on its solid stones, a native energy. Dusty, rough, scratched, the painter’s overlapping colors are so many references to the material dimension, invitations to a physical and interior excavation.