Like a gesture meant to underscore the importance of taking back the reins of the present, a visual weave or a luminous sign upon the urban fabric (always a place of encounter and civic passage), the new site-specific project organized by Bianco-Valente for PAC – Porto di Arte Contemporanea in Acciaroli is a temporary work of contemporary art that strikes directly at the heart of the public, uniting life and imagination in every aspect of existence, restoring to us the simplest — and in some cases inexpressible — elements of human relationships.

The stage for this new adventure is the Norman tower of Acciaroli (known as the Cannicchio tower, after the lord of the fief), where distant lights mirror the sea: specifically, the wall facing the central square that lies along the Tyrrhenian shoreline, next to the Church of the Santissima Annunziata. On the wall, cracked by sun and years, the neon inscription Summer is almost gone glimmers, becoming a summer beacon, a metaphor for a sought-after and indispensable optimism.

Once again, the work of Bianco-Valente steps outside the closed, polished spaces of the gallery or the museum tout court to immerse itself in everyday life, to reckon with presences, to touch with one's own hand the voix du silence (Malraux), to wager on humanity's capacity to invent and live new relationships, to experience emotions still unknown.

The audience for this work is, in this case, the one distracted by daily life, the one who rushes out of the house to run small domestic errands, or the one who gathers in the square in the afternoon and evening to celebrate. It is an audience that stumbles pleasantly upon words, rediscovering the vertigo of reflection: because a work by Bianco-Valente, whether permanent or temporary, is always an epiphany, an indelible trace, a vivid and lively memory. Almost as if pointing to a vital slogan, Summer is almost gone is an eloquent synonym for a widespread sense of unease that has for some time been running through international artistic currents, pushing artists to seek a more forthright confrontation with social reality and with the contradictions of the present. But it is also, and above all, «a hymn to life, an invitation to enjoy every moment of one's existence» (Bianco-Valente).

With an informational essentiality that goes straight to the problems, questions and needs of the everyday public, this new project is, today, a message and a massage aiming to awaken society's degree of vitality, a moment of shared experience, a mediating function whose plasticity intervenes directly and effectively in life to generate active participation, to re-establish a lost communion, an affective fusion.

These four luminous words chosen by Bianco-Valente are, indeed, in the mild yellow of evening, a poetic vision that gathers a community unto itself, a commitment that draws history into itself (that of every single viewer and that of the species), the sketch of a concept capable of revealing to us everything about our existence in the world, an evolutionary vision that reconnects with the clarity of origins: that is, of a life that must be lived, that must be appreciated because it is precious, that must be grasped in its irresistible and fragile fleetingness.
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Taken from the book Porto d'arte contemporanea, tre anni di PAC 2015/16/17,
edited by Massimo Sgroi, Multistampa srl, October 2017

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