DentroOreto

A collection of life stories: this is DentroOreto, the photographic work by Umberto Santoro for the OltreOreto exhibition developed for Manifesta12. In DentroOreto we are immediately welcomed into private homes, and a sense of intimacy pervades us just enough to establish a dialogue with the identity of those furnishings and walls. Private photographs, drawer photographs, attentive to detail and the impalpable, these shots are in fact permeated by a very sentimental diegetic force, which becomes the protagonist of the entire project in its essential role of telling us, drawing on domestic still life compositions full of past kinetics, who has sat on those now empty sofas. With DentroOreto, Umberto Santoro confirms his mission to search for the immaterial, the fanatical. These are slow photographs in which the artist blends in with the environment to capture its apparently insubstantial but heavy atmosphere, perceiving in each shot that distance between the object and the subject portrayed. The photographs were printed on coated PVC banners and installed American-style. The work was completed by a text written by the artist, in which he tells the stories of the characters featured in his photos. The text is undoubtedly a document of the experience that led the artist to develop the DentroOreto series, an experience during which he was able to relate to the historical inhabitants of the neighbourhoods beyond the south coast. Text by Emilio Orofino, curator of the project.