Spirito Sangue / Lorenzo Montinaro

Spotlight on Lorenzo Montinaro exhibition curated by Maria Abramenko

Spirito Sangue by Lorenzo Montinaro is an excavation of death, memory, and time. Set in Taranto, a city haunted by industrial decay and environmental collapse, the exhibition explores mortality not as an end, but as a condition of existence. Through fragments of marble, erased inscriptions and relics soaked in caducity, Montinaro constructs fragile monuments that resist disappearance, dwelling in erosion, yet standing against oblivion.

Cohabiting with Death

In 1986, Siouxsie and The Banshees sang of ancient civilizations “choking on the dirt and sand,” as their former glories were “dragged and washed with eager hands.” Today, Taranto lives in constant dialogue with death. Here, mortality is not an end—it is an ongoing state. Unlike in the song, where destruction is wrought by nature, in Taranto it is the result of human hands. Life doesn’t conclude; it fades before forming, suffocated by toxicity, asbestos, and the looming specter of the ILVA steel plant. The air carries industrial ghosts: fine, invisible particles that infiltrate lungs and erode bodies from within. Absence saturates the atmosphere, heavy with suspended breaths. It is from this erosion, this landscape of loss, that Lorenzo Montinaro shapes Spirito Sangue.

Your City Lies in Dust, My Friend

Montinaro returns to Taranto not as a native, but as an exile walking haunted ground. Spirito Sangue is not a homecoming—it is an unearthing. He excavates corpses both literal and symbolic, remnants that once resisted time’s slow abrasion. But in Taranto, time distorts. Illness stretches it, transforming days into centuries, into a drawn-out wait for a death that never leaves. Montinaro does not simply document decay; he digs into it. From the cavities he opens, he builds not tombs but monuments, structures that refuse disappearance, that stand against the vanishing brought by erosion, indifference, and time. From the dust, he outlines an archaeology of loss. A memory not based on endurance, but on the fragile insistence of what refuses to be forgotten.

“Here, mortality is not an end—it is an ongoing state.”

Marble Stands to Eternity as Words Stand to Oblivion

Montinaro works with abandoned headstones. Marble slabs once heavy with memory, now stripped of meaning. His medium is destruction, but within it lies a brutal tenderness. He doesn’t erase at random; he subtracts with care, allowing fragmented epitaphs to flicker into view. Language, in his hands, becomes ruin: fractured, half-spoken, buried. In these remnants, words tremble with the last trace of life. His work echoes the poems of Salvatore Toma and the mourning rituals of Ernesto De Martino. Using marble pushed to the edge of articulation, Montinaro recalls Salvo’s reflections on the decay of language itself. Nothing remains stable: the power of words collapses under time’s pressure.

“His medium is destruction, but within it lies a brutal tenderness.”

Materic Presence Fighting Time

In the crypt of the Basilica Cattedrale of San Cataldo, Montinaro arranges a precarious constellation: marble shards, broken inscriptions, and disjointed words balanced in delicate coexistence. Even marble, forged in geological time and once destined for eternity, submits to impermanence. Fragmented, it mirrors the vulnerability of flesh. Spirito Sangue engages not only with death, but with place as its works are rooted in time and site specificity. Staged during the Catholic Jubilee, a ritual of penance and renewal, the exhibition casts man not as saint, but as sinner. Each piece speaks of the fall, the return to matter. Blood, spirit, memory: these are the intangible materials of the show. But its true substance is time.

Resistance to Caducity

Alongside marble and charred wood, Montinaro introduces relics and taxidermied animals: mute witnesses of absence. Domesticated canaries perch on benches, evoking lives erased. Clocks without hands and reversed pendulums signal time’s disintegration. Irony pulses through these works, but it cuts deep. Magpies, drawn to light like worshippers to stained glass, serve as self-portraits: creatures seduced by divinity, yet guilty of stealing signs and memory. At the center of the crypt, a site-specific relic: a slab of marble slowly absorbing lamb’s blood. It does not rest on an altar but lies where one once stood. The inscription “Do this in memory of me” echoes liturgy, but here becomes a call to collective remembrance. A quiet, steady act of resistance against the tickling of the clock.

Spirito Sangue / Lorenzo Montinaro

Credits:

Artist: Lorenzo Montinaro / @lorenzo_montinaro_
Curator: Maria Abramenko / @mariabramenko
By: Contemporary Cluster / @contemporary_cluster
Words: Giulia Piceni / @giuliaapiceni
Editor: Maria Abramenko / @mariabramenko
Junior Editor: Annalisa Fabbrucci / @annalisa_fabbrucci

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