Luca Gioacchino Di Bernardo

“Our entire life is an assumption: in reality, we are not truly conscious of ourselves; our fundamental questions remain unresolved.”

This is how Luca Gioacchino Di Bernardo (Naples, 1991) articulates the premises of his evocative iconography, which includes hybridizations between humans, animals, and plants; accumulations of semi-abstract forms that evoke tangled vegetation or mineral stratifications; and scenes with a ritualistic or “magical” quality.

Through a drawing practice developed since childhood and refined during his time at art high school—without ever feeling the need to complete an academic degree—the artist aims to “pass on and at the same time subvert the Italian historical-artistic tradition,” assigning “absolute value to the immediacy of the line and the drawing.” From one work to the next, a sort of alternative mythology takes shape—a cycle of allegories to be read like rock engravings, imbued with philosophical reflections as well as “esotericism, magic, and superstition.”

Text by Stefano Castelli