Domani Torno: Enrico David Reinvents Himself at Castello di Rivoli
No nostalgia, just presence. “Domani torno” at Castello di Rivoli is not just an exhibition—it’s a return staged as a collective performative act. Enrico David—born in Ancona, London-based by choice, an outsider by vocation—returns to Italy after forty years with the largest solo show ever dedicated to him, curated by Marianna Vecellio, and does so in the most radical way possible: transforming the Manica Lunga into a theatrical machine of memory.
At the opening on Wednesday, amid tapestries, articulated mannequins, folding beds, and greenish neon lights referencing his father’s company (“Neon Ancona”), the crowd moved like at a major event: artists, directors, curators, gallerists, museum directors. Guided by director Francesco Manacorda, the guests included Luca Guadagnino, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Pedro Barbosa, Guglielmo Castelli, Monica Bonvicini, Michael Anastasiades, Ralph Rogoff, and Jeremy Deller. The atmosphere was intense, full of conversation and curious glances, with visitors moving through the works as if on a film set, between amazement, recognition, and a palpable collective excitement.
The more than eighty works on display span thirty years of practice, arranged across six rooms that function like chambers of the mind: from “Madreperlage” to “Ultra Paste”, from “Absuction Cardigan”—shortlisted for the 2009 Turner Prize and exhibited at Tate Britain—to “Tutto il resto spegnere”, part of the work shown at the Italian Pavilion of the 2019 Venice Biennale, culminating in the new production “Il centro dei miei occhi è 160” (1995–2025), which opens the exhibition as a biographical and symbolic circuit breaker.
“Enrico David’s works resist decoding,” writes curator Vecellio. Indeed, at a time when imagination risks becoming a shared file, “Domani torno” stands as a declaration of independence: the body, matter, and memory as a political act. While outside the museum the conversation revolves around AI and algorithms, inside the Castle, everything returns to being human.
Text: Germano D’Acquisto
Photos: Niccolò Campita
