Mimmo Jodice on show at Castel Nuovo: metaphysical Naples among shadows and apparitions

A journey into the most impalpable and suspended Naples, among shadows, apparitions and architectures that seem to emerge from a dream. With Mimmo Jodice. Metaphysical Naples, the city celebrates one of its contemporary interpreters through an exhibition set up in the Palatine Chapel, the Chapel of the Souls in Purgatory and theCastel Nuovo Armory. The exhibition, open to the public from April 13 to Sept. 1, 2025, is a tribute to Mimmo Jodice (Naples,1934), an artist who has made photography a language capable of rewriting the identity of his city.

The exhibition develops in a path divided into chapters that evoke the archetypes of metaphysical imagery: Distances, Arches, Columns, Statues, Monuments, Shadows, Apparitions and Voids. More than fifty shots by the Neapolitan master are juxtaposed with Giorgio de Chirico’s paintings, establishing a dialogue between photography and painting, reality and vision. Jodice’s approach transforms the city into a sequence of rarefied and silent spaces, in which light sculpts solitary architecture and enigmatic figures. Naples, in his shots becomes the scene of a poetic suspension, evoking atmospheres of distance and mystery.

The exhibition project marks the first installment of Contemporary Naples 2025, a program of exhibitions and installations conceived by Mayor Gaetano Manfredi and curated by Vincenzo Trione, councilor for contemporary art and museum activities and curator of the exhibition itself. Financed by the Campania Region with funds from the Complementary Operational Program, Napoli metafisica is promoted by the City of Naples with organization and communication by Electa, in collaboration with Studio Mimmo Jodice and Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico. The initiative is part of a broader strategy to strengthen the role of Naples as a center of contemporary art. Contemporary Naples aims to create a direct relationship between artists and the city through interventions in public spaces and site-specific installations. The project has already triggered processes of urban redevelopment, transforming squares, cloisters and neighborhoods thanks to the looks of national and international artists. Jodice’s exhibition represents a new stage in this reflection on the city and its artistic heritage.

Castel Nuovo, the exhibition venue, is at the center of a major museum enhancement. In recent years, the exhibition itinerary has been enriched with new acquisitions, including Crocodile Tears, a work created in 2023 by Francesco Vezzoli for the castle’s Prisons, and Gaetano Pesce’s installation La freccia nel cuore (The Arrow in the Heart ), located in the monumental courtyard. Jodice’s exhibition is part of this process, returning to the public an unprecedented vision of the castle and its spaces.The opening of the exhibition will be celebrated on Sunday, April 13, with a day of free admission from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. (last admission at 5:30 p.m.). From the following day, Metaphysical Naples will be open from Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Notes on the artist

Mimmo Jodice, born in Naples in 1934, continues to live in his native city. Since the 1960s he has distinguished himself as an avant-garde photographer, sensitively exploring the expressive potential of photographic language. His contribution to the cultural debate played a key role in the affirmation of Italian photography also at the international level. In the early 1960s he began a series of experiments on the materials and codes of photography, conceiving it not as a simple descriptive tool but as a creative medium. In the 1970s he came into contact with the artists of the neo-avant-garde movements that animated the Neapolitan scene, moving increasingly toward a conceptual research photography.

In 1980 he published Vedute di Napoli (Views of Naples), a work that marked a turning point in his career. Here he began to investigate urban reality with a visionary gaze, far from traditional documentation and close to an aesthetic of metaphysical ancestry, a distinctive feature of his language. From 1986 he devoted himself to research on the Mediterranean and archaeology, which culminated in the publication of the volume Mediterraneo (Aperture, New York) and an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1995, where his works became part of the permanent collection. In 2003 the Accademia dei Lincei awarded him the Feltrinelli Prize and the French Ministry of Culture named him Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Six years later the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome dedicated a major retrospective to him, while in 2011 the Louvre Museum invited him to exhibit the project Les Yeux du Louvre.

In 2016 the Madre Museum in Naples, under the curatorship of Andrea Viliani, hosts the anthological exhibition Attesa 1960-2016. Between 2018 and 2024, his works are exhibited in such prestigious institutions as the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow, the Eretz Museum in Tel Aviv, Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Milan Triennale, Galerie Karsten Greve in Paris and St. Moritz, MAC in Gibellina, Gallerie d’Italia in Turin, Maxxi in Rome, Villa Bardini in Florence, and the Italian Center for Photography “Camera” in Turin. In 2022 his biography Firmly on the Clouds, which traces his artistic journey, was published.

Mimmo Jodice on show at Castel Nuovo: metaphysical Naples among shadows and apparitions

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