Nothing Under Heaven
New works by Joseph Liatela exhibited alongside photography by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and religious art by Carlo Dolci (1616-1686) from the University Galleries’ collection, invoke a range of stories to assess what it means to move together, remember together, and repair together.
Liatela correlates spaces of communal experience – churches, medical institutions, and clubs – where promises of salvation and healing commingle in proximity to loss and grief. By uniting these different spaces through a range of mediums and interdisciplinary analysis, Liatela reveals how these disparate environments hold similar contradictions that impact the way we perceive ourselves and each other.
Within the exhibition, the search for absolution in a Church, the potential for restoration through medical care, and the rapturous escapism of the club become entangled. Liatela also unites ideologies of the afterlife – the veneration of patron saints, possibilities of dancing with the ghosts of loved ones, and the lingering specter of death in hospitals – to further pronounce their similarities while making their differences visible as well.
