PRO TEMPORE
Luca Vitone
Pro tempore is a sea voyage that, starting on April 29th from the island of Elba, Napoleon Bonaparte's compulsory residence, will end on the island of Saint Helena, his final residence. For the artist, the journey and the voyage are a pretext to develop a reflection on the role of power identified with the sea.
The project is realized thanks to the 14th edition of Italian Council, a program for the support and promotion of Italian contemporary art abroad, promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. It is supported by the Fondazione OELLE Mediterraneo Antico ETS as the proposing entity. It aims to produce a new series of works, including an artist's film, and a final publication.
At the heart of the work is a sea voyage aboard the Adriatica, lasting approximately two months, with four intermediate stops (the Balearic Islands, Algeciras, the Canary Islands, and Cape Verde). The artist will embark on April 29th, departing from the island of Elba, Napoleon Bonaparte's forced residence, and concluding on the island of Saint Helena, the French emperor's last forced residence.
The journey and the voyage are an opportunity to develop a new body of work and a nuanced reflection on the political meanings associated with the sea.
The revival of Napoleon's figure becomes the starting point for reflecting on the role of power in contemporary times. The sea—untamed by its very nature, yet a constant object of every empire's desire to control—becomes its privileged metaphor: a space that simultaneously delimits and eludes, defining the boundaries of the object of power while also revealing its persistent instability and mobility.
Pro tempore can be considered a new elaboration of themes that have long been central to the artist's practice and interest, which he has already addressed in several works: per l'eternità (per eternity), exhibited at the Italian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013; Imperium, created for n.b.k. in Berlin in 2014; Europa! at the Nagel Draxler Gallery in Berlin in 2018; Romanistan at the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato in 2019; Io, Villa Adriana at the MAXXI and Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli, in 2021, at the MAC-USP in São Paulo in 2022, and finally A Tale of Forked Tongues at the Siegen Museum in Germany in 2024.
The digital film will be produced upon return from the trip and will be presented in national and international cinema and institutional circuits. Alongside the film production, new works will also be created, which will premiere at the Sonnenstube and De Pietri Artphilein Foundation in Lugano in November 2026. A subsequent restitution will take place at the Donnaregina Foundation for Contemporary Arts in Naples – Madre Museum, which will permanently welcome the artistic project into its collections in spring 2027, concurrently with the film's presentation at the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst and the MAC USP Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo.
The publication, published by Artphilein Editions, will narrate the journey through images and texts, in dialogue with the partner institutions, Sonnenstube and the Fondazione Donnaregina per le Arti Contemporanee di Napoli – Museo Madre, which will also host a dedicated public program. The volume will bring together diverse voices from the international cultural scene to offer a broad and diverse interpretation of the project's outcomes.
Who is Luca Vitone?
Luca Vitone was born in Genoa in 1964 and lives between Berlin and Milan. Since 2006, he has taught at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. In 2019, in collaboration with Stefano Boeri Architetti, he won the competition for the project Il Parco del Polcevera e il Cerchio Rosso (The Polcevera Park and the Red Circle), creating, pending its permanent installation, the temporary work La radura della memoria (The Clearing of Memory), dedicated to the victims of the Morandi Bridge collapse.
At the invitation of Juventus, in 2025 he created the permanent memorial Verso altrove (Toward Elsewhere) in Turin, dedicated to the Heysel tragedy.
His works are included in important public and private collections. He has exhibited in solo and group shows in Italy and abroad.
