Jim Dine in Naples: between art and memory along a 'labyrinth' of stratifications

In the rooms of Castel Nuovo, stone becomes the theatre of the contemporary. With "Elysian Fields", open until 10 February 2026, curator Vincenzo Trione brings to Naples one of the most thoughtful exhibitions of the season, dedicated to Jim Dine, the American master born in 1935, one of the last great protagonists of the pop and post-expressionist season. The project, entirely conceived for the city, interweaves art and memory, light and fragility with a rigour that avoids any spectacular effect.

"It is an exhibition designed for this city," Trione explains, "capable of restoring its layered identity, suspended between past and present.

The installation unfolds as a mental and physical itinerary between the Palatine Chapel, the Armoury Room and the Chapel of the Souls in Purgatory: a journey of twenty-nine plaster sculptures that seem to emerge from time itself, amidst white forms, broken bodies, faceless heads and presences that oscillate between myth and ruin. For the curator, "Dine's works dialogue with ancient artefacts and Renaissance sculptures, creating a narrative that combines realism and archaeology, memory and rebirth".

In this sense, the castle, with its visible stratifications between transparent floors and mediaeval walls, becomes part of the work: "It is not a hosted exhibition, but a work that takes up residence in a place of identity", he is keen to clarify. Dine, who made the sculptures in his studio in St. Gallen, Switzerland, recounts the genesis of the project in words that combine intimacy and craft: "They are portraits I invented and dreamed up, from history and the ancient world. There are lost friends, figures seen in the woods of Vermont. Plaster is my favourite material because of the way it feels in my hands". Porous, luminous, vulnerable material: in it is condensed the ambiguity of the work, suspended between permanence and dissolution.

The dialogue with the Renaissance is central. The restored and rearranged Madonnas with Child by Francesco Laurana and Domenico Gagini confront Dine's fragmented bodies in a short-circuit of epochs and languages. "The path," Trione adds, "is labyrinthine, not chronological but mental. The spectator goes through history like a living archive, where each era resonates in the other'. The project, promoted by the City of Naples, also takes on the value of a reflection on the city and its cultural future. "I believe it is important that this exhibition has been entirely conceived for Naples, because Dine's poetics go hand in hand with a vision that wants to project the city into the world panorama of contemporary art".