Bernard Hickey

Professor Bernard Hickey AM, and Director of the Observatory on Diasporas, Cultures and Institutions of Overseas Countries, Full Professor of English Language and Literature, Director of the Section of Australian Studies at the University of Lecce.

Over the years Giovanni Korallo has shared with us the journey of his life as an artist. And now, after his latest successes in Nairobi and Turin, he has set up this new and timely exhibition in his "baroque" Lecce, his homeland and residence. In a sense it is the result of Korallo's reflections on the situation in America, North and South. He expresses himself with renewed singularity and commitment on the United States and on issues such as the ubiquitous Coca Cola or on the inevitably schizophrenic culture that has gone. beyond the apotheosis of a Marylin seen as a star (and crowned as a star). As in Latin America, the juxtaposition of Korallo's acute observation with the accurate representation of the emigrants who have made themselves economically in Argentina acquires a new human dimension thanks to the choice of the setting. In these paintings, music has supreme strength / power. It influences the characters represented to such an extent that they let their guard down to reveal their innermost feelings. The unsatisfied desires and nostalgia of emigrants far from home are clearly and movingly seen in the controlled abandonment, in the incessant iteration of the couple dancing the tango and in the numerous middle-aged singles grouped around the piano. In real silence you can hear their plaintive voices with your mind, or, to return to dance, you can go back to the rhythms of an Astor Piazzolla who created an Italo-Argentine ethos in his compositions. However, given the dramatic events in New York on that fateful 11 ​​September 2001 / which was followed by the appalling financial crisis and the consequent political crisis in Argentina, the Korallo exhibition - planned before these disasters - acquires new importance, a new pressing need. The world has changed, and so have we, and our perceptions. While the media is focusing on terrorism, violence, war and death, there is a parallel current of a more careful awareness of human values, of injustice, of human rights. At the same time there is a greater focus - at the level of activism and introspection - on the individual, the human component of suffering and collective responsibility in the world. Fortunately, there are no changes in Korallo's core values. Music continues to have its time honored role, people sing, dancers still dance. Korallo has always projected a fusion of energy, humanity, sensuality, spirituality and generous, joyful exuberance, which inevitably brings to mind an original impression of the Baroque. In many ways this idea will not be challenged by the artist himself, and moreover, it is indeed very appropriate to apply to the spirit of which he was born and trained in Lecce (but not exclusively). Undoubtedly, a Lisbon resident would not need information on the Baroque, but might welcome a comment on Lecce, which plays its part in the European Council of "Le Routes du Baroque" and "Les Espaces du Baroque" of UNESCO. The Lecce Baroque belongs to the great traditions of Southern Baroque art in Italy, the Iberian Peninsula and the Portuguese and Spanish Empires in the world, while maintaining its distinctive / specific / peculiar character. However, there is no reference to any inconsistency, it is life itself. We just have to be grateful to Giovanni Korallo for showing him and for wanting to share with us his latest objective visual correlatives as an expression of the complexity of the destiny of every human being in a global society.