Eh, lampu! is Daniele Puppi’s solo exhibition at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. It is difficult to actually refer to it as an exhibition: it is, rather, one of his interventions that, in his “artistic practice”, orchestrates a veritable reversal of space and perception.
In the case of the Accademia di San Luca, this reversal occurs on several fronts, not least that linked to its sacred image in the “art system”. In these days, from a place that hosts, the first floor of the Academy is reversed into a malleable material in the hands of the artist.
In the orchestration of space-image-sound-spectator, Puppi once again constructs “situations” that cause every pre-established canon to slip outside the walls of those who welcome them. Contrasting space and challenging limits require a radical gesture; even causing something to “slip” outside in these cases requires the force of an “explosion”, of a radical gesture. The reaction is one of inevitable amazement. Ehi lampu!, the title, is in fact a Sardinian phrase that expresses wonder or amazement in the face of a sudden and unexpected flash or lightning bolt. And the spectator, who on the way to the Accademia di San Luca expects something completely different, is inevitably struck by lightning; and those who are prepared to be surprised are never prepared for how.
The space is transformed by four installations, three of which are new, which define the rooms on the ground floor. The entrance is greeted by The Chain, where aggressive moments extrapolated from Tom & Jerry animations and edited in rapid succession work – through repetition – on the concept of limits. And if this is one of the three works already created, the effect it produces in its location in the space is certainly new; positioned obliquely under the entrance archway, the screen and animation abruptly “break” the view of Francesco Borromini’s internal portico and the sacredness of the place.
In the first room, a naked woman lies on her back, balancing on two boulders, Coyote Venus (2023). She is motionless, and the image would also appear motionless were it not for the breeze that slightly moves her hair. We follow her gaze, which we imagine is directed towards the horizon, waiting for something.
Continuing into the central room, with Downtown Tunes (2025) we look out over the urban landscape of a Los Angeles neighbourhood (filmed from the artist’s studio) through a fixed-camera video where life flows in a cyclical narrative, at a rhythm that alternates between day and night.
In the last room, Il lancio del sasso (The Throwing of the Stone), originally shot on film in 1985 near the confluence of the Cellina and Meduna rivers, projects us beyond the wall through the repetition of a minimal gesture, but one charged with tension, a force that seems to project itself beyond the image itself, beyond the space.
In each room and in the whole, space, image, sound and spectator enter a field of forces that escape any perceptual “pigeonholing” and construct a situation, a condition where repetition takes shape and challenges limits, an approach that defines many of Puppi’s works, particularly in the “Fatiche” series, as always, in an ever-changing form.
Paradoxically, reaching this point of such a drastic reversal of space occurs through a process of “tuning in” to the environment.
“I have always understood [space] as a passive force”, says Puppi to Bruno Di Marino in an interview for ‘Il Manifesto’”. “Large, narrow, long, short, wide, high, curved, small, empty, full, damp, mouldy, clean, dirty. There are no beautiful or ugly spaces. I never choose them, they are given to me. My intention, after considering and getting to know them, experiencing them, smelling them, feeling them and touching them in their most intimate parts, is to make them explode’ (Daniele Puppi in Bruno Di Marino, Daniele Puppi. Rianimazioni. Personale Eh Lampu a Roma, Accademia di San Luca, “Il Manifesto”, 08.11.2025, translated from Italian).
His relationship with space is therefore one of “reconciliation” rather than adaptation; only in this way can it be made malleable. At a particular moment, when the obsessive repetition of the short circuit in the image and between image-space and sound meets the viewer, it can be made to “explode”. Not an exhibition but a flash that shakes, and as when one is dazzled by a strong light, the image that stays afterwards remains, together with the “astonishment” at the overturning of a “sacred” space, in a gesture as studied and thoughtful as it is immediate: Eh, lampu!
Daniele Puppi, Eh, lampu!, curated by Marco Tirelli, Accademia di San Luca, until 6 December 2025
The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (Italian/English) with an introduction by Claudio Strinati, an essay by Marco Tirelli, and critical texts by Peter Benson Miller, Bruno Di Marino, Huang Du, Maria Silvia Farci, and Astrid Narguet (Skira 2025).
images: (cover 1) Daniele Puppi, “Coyote Venus”, 2023 Sound video installation. FRAME. Photo by Andrea Veneri (2) Daniele Puppi, “Downtown Tunes”, 2025 Sound video installation. FRAME. Photo by Andrea Veneri (3) Daniele Puppi, ‘The Chain’, 2019 Video sound installation. FRAME. Photo by Andrea Veneri (4) Daniele Puppi, ‘Il Lancio del Sasso’, 1995/2025 Video sound installation. FRAME. Photo by Andrea Veneri.
