The world as it appears
An exhibition in collaboration with Andrea Simi
Guido Guidi (1941, Cesena), Vittore Fossati (1954, Alessandria), Cesare Ballardini (1954, Fusignano), Paola De Pietri (1960, Reggio Emilia), and Marcello Galvani (1975, Massa Lombarda).
The first group exhibition entirely dedicated to the Italian photography through the last decades, in particular reffered to the art movement for which Viaggio in Italia and the figure of Luigi Ghirri represent the divide between “before” and “after”. Ghirri was he who shared this adventure with Fossati and Guidi and in 1979 curated the first exhibition of Ballardini.
Five authors, one same way of intending photography, a common pathway made with resemblance, proximity (even geographical) and frequent collaborations. What unites them is a way to photograph, which is mainly human experience, continued interaction with the world, with things, with their personal and autobiographical, yet collective too, iconography; it is the watching of phenomenons seeking not the truth but a supposition of the reality emerging from chaos and multitude. A questioning attitude, which does not provide the consolation from the unveiling, but points to the necessity, ethics, and aesthetics of a gesture, which is meaningfully “artistic”. This is rather an attempt to ‘glimpse’ than a hope to behold clearly, Vittore Fossati suggests.
A series of small photographs by the latter, titled Il Tanaro a Masio (Tanaro in Masio, 2010-2012), shall show to sign a new chapter of his artistic livelihood. Every day briefly dwelling by the same place along the course of the Tanaro river, with the heretic intent to demonstrate that photography may even transform, for example by bending tree branches, playing them up until tad one another, interweaving them with their own reflex on the water, shall generate a triumph of ‘undeniably true’ trompe-l’oeil. Beside, a selection of momentous pictures are to be exposed.
By Guido Guidi, a wide selection from Cinque paesaggi (Five landscapes, 1983-1993), one of the “series suppositions” within his production, shall be shown. He chose such title right because almost ‘blasphemous’ for someone who has founded all his work on the redefinition of the relationship between the photographer and the environment, effectively making it impossible to use the term ‘landscape’ unless considered as a ‘human landscape’, where the author himself is comprised, indeed, among humans and objects with no separation or hierarchy.
By Cesare Ballardini, three series are to be proposed: Dal Vero (From The True, selection, 1985-1989), Casa con ombrellone (House with an Umbrella, 2002) and Palindromo (Palindrome, 2012). Three witnesses of an author worshipped among its peers living and photographing the same places as Guidi, and with whom he shares a few topics and the methodological approach, declined in black and white and that directly refers to the major New West american exponents.
By Paola De Pietri, a selection from Questa Pianura (This Lowland, 2004-2016), a work quite representing an ‘archaeological’ quest: the discovery of the remains of a peasant civilisation in the lowland of the Po River which passing left abandoned and decaying colonic houses on the ground, and isolated trees, monuments of the land’s makeover, which interrogate, once again, about the multiplicity of “truth”.
Eventually, a selection of 15 photographs between 2006 and 2014 by Marcello Galvani. In his work, the phenomenological approach applies to a defined subject of investigation: the human nature. His works compose a mosaic of minimal human happenings, a succession of irrelevant occurrences perceived as if prosperous, which his intervention validates although does not equip with a meaning.
For any further information please contact:
gallery@unosunove.com