Plan X Gallery is pleased to present Delphis, a public installation by Giuseppe Lo Schiavo at the Belvedere di Tragara, Capri, realized with the support of the City of Capri and courtesy of the artist.

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Overlooking one of the island’s most iconic viewpoints, the work presents three bronze dolphins suspended between myth, memory, and the contemporary condition of the Mediterranean. The figures seem to emerge from the landscape as silent presences, poised between natural apparition and ancient imagination.

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The project originates from Rotta, a video installation presented by Lo Schiavo at Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, in March 2026, dedicated to migration across the contemporary Mediterranean. At the center of that work was a performance in open sea. On December 10, 2025, ten miles off the Costa degli Dei in Calabria, a head of Apollo was entrusted to the waters during a ceremony accompanied by the Banda di Pizzo Calabro. At that moment, several dolphins swam alongside the boats, following the gesture until the end.

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For Lo Schiavo, that unexpected presence became the generative image of the work. From there, Delphis was born: three bronze sculptures inspired by the dolphins that appeared during the performance. In Greek tradition, Apollo is also the god who can manifest himself in the form of a dolphin — delphis. These figures are therefore not represented simply as animals, but as presences suspended between ancient myth, lived experience, and ecological awareness.

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From a distance, their bodies appear whole, elegant, almost timeless. Up close, however, the bronze surface reveals engravings, cuts, and signs of physical vulnerability. The dolphins thus become biological sentinels, carrying on their bodies the traces of the environment they inhabit. The beauty of the form gives way to a more fragile condition: that of a living sea, crossed by migration, damage, and survival.

Installed at the Belvedere di Tragara, Delphis enters into direct dialogue with the landscape of Capri: the sea, the horizon, the Faraglioni, and the island’s long cultural memory. The belvedere thus becomes a place of contemplation, where beauty and warning coexist. The dolphin, traditionally associated with protection, passage, and divine appearance, here assumes the role of a symbolic and transformative figure.

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Through bronze, Lo Schiavo gives permanence to a moment that was originally fleeting: an apparition at sea, a ritual gesture, a natural coincidence. Yet this permanence is not monumental in the traditional sense. It is marked, wounded, exposed. Delphis invites the viewer to look again at the Mediterranean not only as a landscape of beauty and mythology, but as a living body crossed by movement, memory, and transformation.