A UNIVERSE OF THOUGHTS

The cur­rent exhi­bi­tion at the Gal­lery for Con­tem­porary Pho­to­gra­phy is devo­ted exclu­si­vely to Ita­lian artists. The spec­trum ran­ges from pho­to­gra­phic explo­ra­tion of anci­ent art, new inter­pre­ta­ti­ons of René Magritte’s works and old Dutch por­trait pain­ting, to con­tem­porary por­trait pho­to­gra­phy. A total of 16 fine art prints by Giu­seppe Lo Schiavo, Ugo Ric­ci­ardi, Ales­sio Albi and Ric­cardo Ban­diera are presented.

In 2012, Giu­seppe Lo Schiavo (Milan) achie­ved his inter­na­tio­nal bre­ak­th­rough with the series of pain­tings “Levi­ta­tion”, which was inspi­red by René Mag­ritte: While Mag­ritte still relied on paint and can­vas to phy­si­cally rep­re­sent his pic­to­rial idea, the artist trans­fers it directly into the viewer’s ima­gi­na­tive world with the help of see­min­gly life­like pho­to­gra­phy. The obvious arti­fi­cia­lity of pain­ting is repla­ced by direct ima­gi­na­tion. For Giu­seppe Lo Schiavo, „these pho­tos do not depict the actual rea­lity, but they illus­trate a ‘uni­verse’ made of thoughts, the free­dom of ima­gi­nary popo­ten­tia­lity of the unconscious­ness to ‘levi­tate‘ and and achieve cogni­tive levels that sur­pass rea­lity.” His series “Ad Vivum” from 2013, in turn, cele­bra­tes the aut­ho­rity of his­to­ri­cal image reper­toires, spe­ci­fi­cally, Dutch por­trait pain­ting of the 15th cen­tury. Howe­ver, the colors and for­mal lan­guage appear stron­gly redu­ced and devoid of any indi­vi­dua­liza­tion. The his­to­ri­ci­zing term “Ad Vivum” (Latin for “accor­ding to the living model”) thus takes on a recipro­cal level of mea­ning, because Lo Schiavo’s pho­to­graphs show models whose light com­ple­xion and sta­tu­es­que pose do not sug­gest any clo­sen­ess to nature: the tra­di­tio­nal con­cept of por­trait simi­la­rity is under­mined and repla­ced by arche­typal figu­ra­tion. In con­trast, anci­ent Greek bronze sculp­tures from the Natio­nal Archaeo­lo­gi­cal Museum of Athens are given a con­tem­porary level of inter­pre­ta­tion in the series “Tre­a­su­res from the Sea” (2019) with the help of a light­ing con­cept deri­ved from anci­ent color theory: This affects the detailed bronze bodies and inter­prets them as par­ti­ci­pants in a mytho­lo­gi­cal game taking place before our eyes.

Ugo Ric­ci­ardi (Turin) trans­forms fami­liar pla­ces in sou­thern Italy into magi­cal visi­ons in which the dar­k­ness and moon­light pro­vide the back­drop for mys­te­rious light images. The result is the series “Nightscapes” (2015–2018), a night world that oscil­la­tes bet­ween rea­lity and dream. The light­ing of a land­scape, a tree or an anci­ent temple ruin takes the viewer into a sur­real, deser­ted world in which time seems to stand still. The work pro­cess is com­plex: during the day, the image sec­tion is selec­ted, anti­ci­pa­ting the final image result; at night, expe­ri­ments are car­ried out with arti­fi­cial cir­cles of light, which create three-dimensional forms with the help of rapidly chan­ging for­ma­ti­ons, while ever­y­thing else disap­pears into the dar­k­ness. In order to avoid a super­fi­ci­ally rea­listic visua­liza­tion and to direct the focus solely on the trans­for­ma­tion of the motif, the artist limits his light pain­ting to a black and white reproduction.

The focus of the two works by Ales­sio Albi (Peru­gia and Rome) and Ric­cardo Ban­diera (Diano Marina) is the model Vin­cent Litt­le­hat. While Albi crea­tes an unreal scene of bicy­cles in “Before a Ride into the Light” (2015), which her­me­ti­cally shields the model lying on the forest floor, loo­king up drea­mily, and at the same time keeps the camera lens at a dis­tance, Ban­diera crea­tes an inter­ac­tion with the per­son being por­trayed: in “Sum­mer in the city #15” (2013), Vin­cent Litt­le­hat leans against a pane of glass in front of the cool-colored back­ground foil of the Piazza Gae Aulenti in Milan. She exami­nes the approa­ching camera with a melan­cho­lic, skep­ti­cal look, which chal­len­ges the viewer to find out more about the story and back­ground of the per­son in front of him.