Photographica FineArt is an exhibition space dedicated only to 900th century and contemporary photography which, with the exhibition Camere on loan, curated by Angela Madesani, opens a new chapter in its artistic history. Camere on loan collects 16 protagonists of that particular season between the Sixties and the Seventies, during which a crisis of the pictorial and sculptural object manifests itself in the Western artistic world. There are therefore many artists who start using technological media such as photography, cinema and later on video.
Is it possible to identify a common trait that unifies the work of these artists and acts as the leitmotif of this exhibition?
«With this exhibition we went to look for something that was photography, that is the use of the photographic medium, but which at the same time represented, in the intentions of the authors, an art form. The exhibition therefore proposes works that can be placed in distinct fields, by Italian artists from profoundly different histories, who, however, have in common the use of photographic language with different declinations: photography as inclusion (collage), as documentation or even as a use of photographic techniques ranging from the use of Polaroid to paper or canvas sensitized to silver salts. In any case, we are dealing with artists "lent" occasionally to photography, with the sole exception of Franco Vimercati, who since the XNUMXs has been investigating the very meaning of photography ».
Can we make a quick overview of the artists present in the show?
«The exhibition winds through the sixteen walls of the gallery - one for each artist - in a path that accompanies the visitor through the various experiences. Starting from the XNUMXs, Vincenzo Agnetti experimented, among others, with the use of photography, redefining the field of conceptual art in Italy, in close relationship with American experiences. La di lui is an essential reflection of a linguistic matrix; so for Paolo Gioli who manipulates the photographic instrument, with an avant-garde attitude, empties it to reach the essence, to the zero degree. The fundamental core of Franco Vaccari's research is the theorization of the concept of exposure in real time. Vaccari as Cioni Carpi is a protagonist of Narrative Art, a recreation of a temporal situation through the use of the sequence. The work of Michele Zaza is also anthropological, whose research is strongly influenced by the Mediterranean culture of which he is a son. The problem of keeping the concept of avant-garde alive is primary for Bruno Di Bello, who uses a cold medium capable of having a privileged relationship with reality. Claudio Parmeggiani engages in dialogue with the history of art, giving life to a relationship that is never a mere quotation. Over the years, Aldo Tagliaferro has given life to an existential reflection in which the photographic medium is the protagonist. Just like Giorgio Ciam in whose work is the idea of the self as presence-absence, which he places in dialogue with the surrounding. Coming from the environment of Florentine visual poetry are the conceptual Maurizio Nannucci and Ketty La Rocca, the only female presence in the exhibition, the undisputed protagonist of Body Art. The body, in relation to space, through photography, was already the subject of reflection in the XNUMXs. by Luca Maria Patella, of which there are three important works. A particular interest is focused on the relationship between photography and the artists of Arte Povera, through the works of three protagonists of that movement, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, and Gilberto Zorio. If for Zorio and Penone photography is a trace, a document of an action, for Giulio Paolini, the meaning is of a theoretical nature, of investigation, on the meaning of the medium from a linguistic and conceptual point of view ».
We can therefore speak in a certain sense of a new vision of photography ...
"Indeed. In the work of these artists, photography becomes an objective way to fix the moment in a unique encounter between space and time. In this sense, the Italian art of the period under consideration is in close dialogue with what was happening in the rest of the world, while maintaining its own, as much as original, peculiarity, as Chambers on loan it aims to underline ».
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog, which will have the shape of an artist's book, published in 300 copies by Danilo Montanari publisher.
Lugano, FineArt Photographical Gallery
15 September - 30 November 2016
Tuesday-Friday 09.00-12.30 / 14.00-18.00
Saturday by appointment
