28th June 2008
Mario Cresci. A tutto tondo

The Milan based art-gallery Fotografia Italiana arte contemporanea presents A tutto tondo, images from the Polo Club Saint-Tropez by the Italian artist Mario Cresci.
Polo is played in such an exclusive context, with equipment that is so distinct and recognizable, that it is difficult to consider as the subject of an artistic project. Furthermore it is played with horses, a source of iconography that has enriched centuries of art, making it that much more difficult to express emotions free of the weight of history preceding them.
All of this must be sublimated and overcome by escaping the canons most congenial to photo reportage, recounting more than just the simple characteristics of the game and the environment within which it is practiced: the narration must be more than a simple photographic tale; attention must be concentrated on the least visible elements and details capable of greatly enriching the meaning and symbols of the game precisely because they can be found within this context. In order to accomplish this, a highly talented artist, someone capable of seeing and capturing this special world using a language that goes beyond classic reportage, was entrusted with the mission.
Mario Cresci was the right choice. His extraordinary abilities, talent, technical expertise, theoretical preparation and experience with numerous art forms including drawing, design and graphic composition were all augmented by true love, enthusiasm and commitment to his work. It is important to note, for example, the masterful intuition that led him to choose circular formats for the artworks, underlining a concept of spheres universally present in polo: in the player’s movements, both sweeping and round, or in the details of a horse’s eye, so unsettling and meaningful as to be able to sum up the full range of an animal’s sensations whether awaiting the start or mid-action. Spherical like a ball, the object at the center of this recreational and agonistic activity that is much more “game” than sport, distinguishing it from all other activities that demand enormous amounts of energy and require a ball to play.
(Fabio Castelli)

20th May 2008
Five Years of Fotografia Italiana

Fotografia Italiana arte contemporanea is celebrating the first five years of its activity with two exhibitions opening on 20 May 2008.
‘Nessuna onda può pettinare il mare’, which is curated by Luigi Fassi and opens at 6 pm in the space at Corso di Porta Nuova 34, presents three Finnish artists, Ola Kolehmainen, Nanna Hänninen and Maarit Hohteri together with three Italian artists, Silvio Wolf, Alessandra Spranzi and Marco Campanini.
Carmelo Nicosia’s solo exhibition entitled ‘Nudi’, curated by Fabio Castelli, opens in the Fotografia Italiana gallery at Corso Venezia 22, at 8 pm.
Two separate catalogues will be available at the exhibition venues:
- Nessuna onda può pettinare il mare, with a critical essay by Luigi Fassi.
- Nudi, by Carmelo Nicosia, with a critical essay by Gigliola Foschi.

1st Aprile 2008
Marco Campanini. Collezione di Sabbia / Collection of Sand

Fotografia Italiana arte contemporanea is delighted to present the first personal exhibition of the artist Marco Campanini (Parma, 1981), winner of the “1st Fotografia Italiana arte contemporanea prize” in 2006. His Collezione di Sabbia project continues the concept of his previous cycles, Lo Specchio e il Mito, Gli Spazi dell’Utopia, Grand Tour and Isolario, and furthers Campanini’s critical investigation into the metamorphic nature typical of the contemporary image and photography.
The artist’s research focuses on the questions and problems posed by the myriad of technological images that invade our field of vision every day, blurring our perception of contemporary space, which is increasingly more virtual, amorphous, ambiguous and fragmentary.
The analytical approach of Campanini’s new works aims at highlighting the structural processuality underlying the existence of contemporary images by dispensing with the traditional authoriality dimension of photography. Thus, all of the images on display are reproductions and reworkings of already existing files downloaded from the Internet and traceable to details of works by other artists. Any recognisability and all figurative traces have been erased from them, rendering them abstract iconographies of dark and indefinite tones that allude to a primordial and potential state, an “image degree zero” .
These works propose, therefore, a complex critical exercise in interpretation of the contemporary world and of contemporary space, and they endeavour to find a new value in the fine dust scattered across our shared iconographic universe, that “world crumbled and eroded” so dear to Italo Calvino, from whose collection of articles, published in 1984, this exhibition takes its name.

The exhibition will be open to the public from Wednesday 2nd April to Friday 9th May 2008 from 3.00 pm to 7.00 pm.
Closed on Sunday and Monday. Saturday by appointment from 3.00 pm to 7.00 pm.
The catalogue with comment by Luigi Fassi and Marco Campanini is available in the gallery.

29th January 2008
Luigi Erba. Camera chiara, camera oscura / Light-room, dark-room

Fotografia Italiana arte contemporanea is pleased to present Camera chiara, camera oscura, an exhibition by Luigi Erba that covers four periods of his oeuvre. The exhibition is organised into the following cycles: Panorami per insetti [Panoramas for insects]; Costruzione di un paesaggio [Construction of a landscape]; Un luogo sull’altro [One place on another]; and Paesaggio dissolto [Landscape dissolved].
These cycles look at the special ways photographers can use the dark-room both with a digital camera and with a traditional analogue one. The first cycle, Panorami per insetti, sees Erba use the dark-room to produce a ‘matrix’ by placing insects and dried flowers directly onto paper with a background created by projecting photograms from a traditional film. In the second, Costruzione di un paesaggio, he uses a single sheet to assemble a range of negatives subjected to multiple exposure, or shortens the exposure time when each photogram is printed. In both cases, the resulting work is unique and unrepeatable. After digital acquisition, the image becomes a matrix that can be manipulated further by mounting behind several centimetres of methacrylate; in a showcase with an aerial landscape as a background; or simply on paper with a traditional image.
Erba’s work looks at the dialectic relationship between the magical creativity of the dark-room and the light-room. However, he uses different techniques for Un luogo sull’altro, research he has worked on for over ten years. As the photographs are being taken, the film is overlapped with pictures of different places, some taken months apart. By doing so, he contradicts the idea that photography freezes time within a single space, and thus creates scope for random occurrences.
His journey ends with Paesaggio dissolto, which returns to using both the dark-room and the light-room after the traditional landscape has been deleted by blurring (Fabbrica), or by distorting during printing (Case alpine), as if to distance our emotions from its traditional iconic meaning.
The exhibition unfolds as a series of reflections on photography, which capture planning and construction on one side and emotion and instinct on the other, while taking a long, hard look at the potential of processes and materials, both digital and analogue. After an initial referential moment that plunges the observer into the flux of nature, an image that builds an inner, emotional landscape of personal memory joins it; the image that follows distorts the concept that place, space and time are unique and recognisable.

Inauguration by invitation only Tuesday 29 January from 6.30 pm to 9.00 pm
The exhibition will be open to the public: from Wednesday 30th January to Saturday 8th March 2008 from 3.00 pm to 7.00 pm
Closed on Sunday and Monday – Saturday by appointment from 3.00 pm to 7.00 pm

15th December 2007
Antonio Biasiucci. Ex Voto

Fotografia Italiana arte contemporanea is pleased to present one of the latest works by Antonio Biasiucci. Ex Voto is a tribute to the simple votive offerings crafted as a sign of religious and popular devotion in thanks for grace. The votive offerings Biasiucci has chosen for his photographs are silver casts, as well as ones in poorer materials, depicting parts of the human body that have been miraculously healed. “Votive offerings”, says Biasiucci, “are minimal objects pervaded by extremely complex human stories”. Biasiucci, who is from Campania in southern Italy, captures these offerings in his own particular style, which tends both towards the abstract and, indeed, ‘to extract’ lines and lights from simple objects, creating evocative moods, symbols of ancestral feelings, epic and lost in time. None of Biasiucci’s previous works are merely an exercise in formality, and his latest is no exception; beyond its thought-provoking visual facade lies a vivid insight into history, a world built upon the stories of men and women whose relationship with all things sacred is based on simple symbols.

The exhibition will be open to the public: from Sunday 16th December 2007 to Saturday 12th January 2008 from 3.00 pm to 7.00 pm. The exhibition will be closed for Christmas from 23rd December 2007 to 1st January 2008. Closed on Sunday and Monday – Saturday by appointment from 3.00 pm to 7.00 pm

Exhibition organised in association with the International Photography Festival, Rome, and with Magazzino d’Arte Moderna, Rome. Catalogue available in the gallery.

15th November 2006
Fotografia Italiana Arte Contemporanea is participating in Paris Photo

Paris Photo
Salle Le Nôtre - Stand F09
du 15 au 18 novembre 2007 de 11h à 20h
Carrousel du Louvre 99 rue de Rivoli 75001 Paris

Francesco Pignatelli Fraglie
Vernissage le 13 novembre à 18h30
ouverte jusqu'au 9 décembre 2007 de 9h à 22h
à l'Hôtel Castille 33-37 rue Cambon 75001 Paris

Le Prix Photographique BMW - Paris Photo 2007, dont le thème est L'Eau à l'origine de la Vie, récompensera l'artiste lauréat, Carrousel du Louvre le jeudì 15 novembre à 18h30. Silvio Wolf est parmi les finalistes.

Signatures de livres sur notre stand
Mario Cresci
15 novembre 2007 à 15h00
Antonio Biasiucci
16 novembre 2007 à 15h00

7th November 2006
Francesco Pignatelli. Fragile

Francesco Pignatelli has unveiled Fragile, his latest series of works devoted to natural landscape. These fifteen prints, including one polyptych, capture trees and views of woods both in Italy and abroad, with Pignatelli presenting them in two different ways. Some of the prints are displayed in the traditional manner on a hard, flat surface protected by Plexiglas mounted on a support; many, however, are displayed more originally, with the artist folding the prints and forcing them into Plexiglas cabinets 7 cm thick. Consequently, these works are given a three-dimensional effect that questions the wonder of the natural landscape. Although Pignatelli has reversed the colours in his typical style, the landscape retains its beauty, and we are left to reflect upon nature and its deepest meaning. By reversing the colours, Pignatelli negates realism, and the folded picture forces the observer to walk around it in order to grasp the different facets and readings.
In his introduction to the exhibition, Giorgio Verzotti writes: “[…] …the closer the artists gets, the further he delves physically into the natural scene he is investigating and the further he moves away from the reality that envelops him. His reversal of colours is akin to a process of abandonment, one in which he eschews all hypotheses of recognisability. […] …Pignatelli adds a physical approach to the picture where the photographic paper is not only a support, but an integral part of the picture itself, thus overcoming its two-dimensionality. Such forceful physicality seems to compensate for the sense of loss that is innate to each photograph. Fragile is a contemporary expression of nature’s frailty.”

The exhibition will be open to the public: from Wednesday 7 November to Wednesday 5 December 2007 from 3.00 pm – 7.00 pm. Closed on Sunday and Monday; Saturday by appointment only from 3.00 pm – 7.00 pm.

21st September 2007
Start. Reframe. Le stanze del tempo Francesco Radino

Fotografia Italiana Arte Contemporanea opens the autumn season 2007 with Francesco Radino’s exhibition Reframe. Le stanze del tempo. These twenty or so photographs are divided into three groups: black and white photographs of Italy and Japan from 1999–2000; colour photographs from the same period that show close-ups of Rome’s Basilica di San Clemente; and photographs from 2007 taken in Naples’s Istituto Suor Orsola Benincasa. This last set of photographs is organised into diptychs and features close-ups of some of the Institute’s old prints which reflect fragments of the cloister gardens until the two merge. Playing with the different focuses on either side of the glass, Radino creates works that are formal, yet encourage the observer to see a range of visual interpretations and different meanings within each one. Duality and ambiguous interpretation are just some of the fascinating analytical techniques Radino uses to ponder time and space. At times the outside world is reflected in the glass, almost hiding the interior, at others the interior detail dominates the delicate blurred glimmer reflected. Likewise, his allusive scenes of Japan or his close-ups of historic frescos and decorations in a Christian temple enable the observer to tune into the artist’s own emotional frequency.

Opening on Friday 21st September 2007 from 6.30 pm to 9.00 pm.
Saturday 27th September e Sunday 23rd September special opening from 12.00 am to 9.00 pm.
The exhibition will be open to the public from Tuesday 25 September to Saturday 27 October 2007 from 3.00 pm – 7.00 pm. Closed on Sunday and Monday; Saturday by appointment only from 3.00 pm – 7.00 pm.

15th May 2007
[ ju | lü ] essenza e desiderio Nunzio Battaglia

The two hermetic monosyllables of the title are a direct reference to how the traditional Oriental world is perceived: the word ju is akin to the Western concept of essence within things, but at the same time also alludes to their outward appearance and to their actual purpose; the word lü refers to a more conceptual idea that reflects our perception of the world. Vision and thought lie within both the 21 works on display and those in the catalogue, which range from breathtaking American landscapes to scenes from the far East, details captured with a style that is inspired by the concept of ‘removal' and is pervaded by formal cleansing and compositive rigour. The natural features and landscapes, at times barely visible, appear to drift through magical worlds where the artist attempts to reconcile the two seemingly contradictory ideas of immediate perception and meditated reflection.

Inauguration by invitation only on Tuesday 15th May from 6.30 pm to 9 pm. The exhibition will be open to the public from Wednesday 16th May to Tuesday 17th July 2007 from 3 pm to 7 pm. Closed on Sunday and Monday – Saturday by appointment from 3 pm to 7 pm

31st March 2007
Start Milano

Fotografia Italiana arte contemporanea is participating in the STARTMILANO day on 31 March 2007, the initiative that brings together several art galleries of Milan and offers the public an opportunity to visit them on special days or at unusual times.
The gallery at Corso Venezia 22 will be open until 10:00 pm, in order to give enthusiasts the opportunity to visit the current exhibition.
www.start-mi.net

29th March 2007
MiArt 2007

Fotografia Italiana arte contemporanea is pleased to announce that partecipates in MiArt 2007, the twelfth edition of Milan's International Modern and Contemporary Art Fair, from March 30 to April, 2007 with the exhibition l'Invisibile by Silvio Wolf.
Stand: Pad. 4 stand G10
Web site: miart.it.

"Are the few works displayed at this exhibition enough to render the complexity of a career like Silvio Wolf’s, which spans more than 20 years? There are two answers: the first is no, because the artist has investigated his means of expression, photography, so comprehensively that his career cannot be summarised with these relatively few works. The second is yes, because the subtle ambiguity pervading Wolf’s work is concentrated within these images and they outline it in a manner that becomes familiar to the observers, as long as they know at least the general framework of his oeuvre.
There is a double tension within his work that seems to pull in two opposite directions. On one hand, the first thing Wolf elaborates is the context of the piece; its conception depends entirely on the place, in particular its history, and on the people who have lived there. The underlying aim is to weigh up the historical deeds that founded and anthropologically defined that particular place and to discover both its history and that of its people.(…)"
Giorgio Verzotti

19th March 2007
Gianluigi Colin Assenze

Delving into the meaning of the present by revisiting celebrated icons of the past is a cornerstone of Gianluigi Colin’s artistic research, which breathes fresh life into some of the greatest images in the history of art.
Colin uses meticulous method and stunning aesthetics to assemble, layer, delete and highlight: “At the root of everything may lie the conviction that only absence enables one to perceive the value of presence”, wrote Colin in a reflection on his own work.
By manipulating and deleting, almost iconoclastically, the artist invents a new language in which absence reveals “a new sense of reality”. The images stored in our collective memory live again not only on a formal plane but also as metaphors in which their meanings are endowed with a contemporary bent.
The exhibition "Assenze" will be open to the public from Wednesday 21st March to Tuesday 8th May 2007 from 3 pm to 7 pm. Closed Sunday and Monday – Saturday by appointment only from 3 pm to 7 pm.

30th January 2007
Franco Guerzoni, Paesaggi in polvere

The first exhibition planned in 2007 by Fotografia Italiana Arte Contemporanea is Paesaggi in polvere [Dusty landscapes], consisting of the works created by artist Franco Guerzoni in the 1970’s. They are pieces in which photography plays a primary role, but where the additions of the artist through the use of other materials, set-ups and manipulations recall the experimental climate of those years. At that time, Guerzoni shared many experiences in the Emilia-Romagna city with two important photographers-theorists, Luigi Ghirri and Franco Vaccari, openly questioning the traditional manner of representing the world artistically, resorting to the conceptual approach rather than imitation, and at times with a Neo-Dadaism flavour. The title of the exhibition evokes the idea of a world heavily impacted by the passage of time, and the dust (polvere) is often manifested through various sediments, pieces of plaster, chemical reactions, and natural elements that often give a three-dimensional depth to the photographs, frequently used as backdrops. In the exhibition catalogue, two pieces by Marc Augé – not an art critic but a well-known sociologist-ethnologist – and Elena Volpato highlight these aspects and the cultural journey that has accompanied them.

7th November 2006
Marco Zanta Quarantanovegradi

18 works by Marco Zanta from his Quarantanovegradi [Fortyninedegrees] project will be on display at the Milan branch of Fotografia Italiana Arte Contemporanea . These photographs of landscapes and settings are part of a wider project - Quarantanove [Fortynine] - which this artist from the Veneto has shot against three different backgrounds: factories, oil tankers and worksites, all of which are places that neatly symbolise the work of humanity.
Over the last few years, Zanta's artistic outlook has become more distinctive, establishing itself with a combination of descriptive clarity and emotional strength that imbues his works with substance and intrigue.
This exhibition is accompanied by a book that covers the entire project and includes presentation, comment and critical analysis by Mario Carraro, Italo Lupi, Angela Madesani and Francesco Zanot.

18th October 2006
The latest edition of Pagine di Fotografia Italiana

Is available in the gallery and will be sent to those who requested the last issue (#7) of the publication Pagine di Fotografia Italiana. www.paginedifotografiaitaliana.com

30th June 2006
1st Fotografia Italiana arte contemporanea Prize

The Fotografia Italiana Arte Contemporanea Prize was launched in response to all the authors and artists who had submitted their work for evaluation over the years.
Realising the importance of the task and that expectations were high, we sat down together and judged each entry over a single session. We were also well-aware that ours was an extremely delicate role and that we had to be meticulous, polite and firm if we were to ensure that the end result was useful and satisfactory to all.
Staying true to the gallery’s main aim, the winners’ prize was their participation in an exhibition organised at the Milan branch of Fotografia Italiana and the publication of a catalogue that could be presented to our public and hence to potential clients.
This event was organised in the spirit of a policy that doesn’t just look to master photographers or leading names, but is also intent on discovering new talent. In fact, we believe it is both important and fundamental to pay particular attention to the new generations, labeled as such in terms of age but also and above all in terms of artistic experience.
Eighty-four individuals participated in the event. Given the high overall quality of works received, the examination and selection process was assigned to a panel comprising the following individuals: Nicoletta Rusconi, founder and promoter of Fotografia Italiana; Ada Masoero, journalist and art critic; Roberto Mutti, journalist and photography critic; Claudio Palmigiano, lawyer and enthusiastic photography collector, and Pio Tarantini, artist, photography teacher and editor-in-chief of Pagine di Fotografia Italiana.
The methods and details of this selection were thoroughly described in issue number 4 of Pagine di Fotografia Italiana, the gallery’s publication. www.paginedifotografiaitaliana.com
The success of this competition has encouraged us to embark on a second edition in two years’ time, making the prize biennial. We are certain that an event of this type - as simple yet uncommon amongst private galleries - will enable photography to generate the attention it deserves, rewarding the winners and meeting the policy aims of Fotografia Italiana.