Robert Mapplethorpe: Choreography for an Exhibition

Self-Portrait, 1975, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

​Editer: Christopher George
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Choreography for an Exhibition organized by the museum of contemporary art Madre, in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in New York, brings a body of work to Naples in an innovative show and a performative program starring international choreographers. The exhibition features over 160 works, displayed alongside archaeological, ancient and modern pieces, in addition to a site-specific dance program commissioned to celebrate the performative and physical aspects of Mapplethorpe’s photography.

White Gauze, 1984 @Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by Permission

​The exhibition – curated by Laura Valente and Andrea Viliani – develops into three separate sections, each looking closely at different phases of his work. It opens with "Ouverture", where portraits of Patti Smith and Samuel Wagstaff Jr, the two muses of his life, are facing each other.

Vadim Stain The Floating Grace Performance for Robert Mapplethorpe. Choreography for an Exhibition. Courtesy Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee. Foto © Amedeo Benestante

​In 1969 Mapplethorpe dropped out from art school to live with his girlfriend, the future musician, performer and poet, Patti Smith (her award-winning memoir, “Just Kids,” is the story of their young lives together in NY).  Samuel Wagstaff Jr, 25 years his senior, was his mentor and lover. He was also one of the first art collectors to start buying photographs as early as on 1973, assembling one of the most important private collections of photographs in the world.

Thomas And Dovanna, 1986 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by Permission

​A program of site-specific performances draws from the artist’s work and develops in a Choreography for an Exhibition, including pieces of Olivier Dubois (FR) Vadim Stein (UKR ) Matteo Stella Dance Arts ( IT).

All the subjects, including the most controversial or shocking ones, reveal themselves in curated images of harmony and balance, where the symmetry of the composition echoes from ancient statuary to Neoclassicism and Romanticism.  
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Robert Mapplethorpe
Choreography for an Exhibition
December 15, 2018 
April 8, 2019