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Franco Vaccari
Opere 1955-1975 (2nd December
2007-17th February 2008) |
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Versione italiana
From the discovery of photography as a means to make art
and the technological subconscience of the medium, up to
provoking situations that lead the public to take an active
part in the creation of the artworks: The creative career
of Franco Vaccari ranges between these two extremes. A reference
point in the world of contemporary art ever since his participation
in the Venice Biennale in 1972, he is now the protagonist
in his home town of an important retrospective entitled:
Franco Vaccari. Opere 1955/1975.
Curated
by Luca Panaro and Roberta Russo, organised and produced
by the Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini di Modena, by
the Galleria
Civica di Modena and the Fondazione
Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, the exhibition is housed
in two different venues – the Palazzina dei Giardini,
corso Canalgrande, and the Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini, 160
Via
Giardini, both in Modena, where it will be inaugurated
on Sunday 2nd December 2007 respectively at 11.30am and
12.30pm.
What’s more, the retrospective also presents
a number of unseen works which call for a share of spectator
participation
and which tell the story of a curious and multi-faceted
artist, far from the limitations of collective movements
and a great anticipator of relational aesthetics, now so
widely talked about, with his focus firmly placed on work/audience
interaction.
Palazzina dei Giardini, corso Canalgrande,
Modena
The first stage of this journey/exhibition is
a meeting with the new, with an “exhibition in real time” (an
expression coined by Vaccari himself) especially created
for the Modenese show: number 37 entitled: C'ero
anch'io 2007. A photo booth at the entrance to Palazzina dei Giardini
shoots a strip of photos for anyone who wants one, complete
with all the elements (event, place, date) which serve
to contextualise the shots and thus certify a moment of
existence. "Photography – as Vaccari writes – may
be seen as a form of prosthesis applied to aid our memories
just when our sense of self, in the era of globalisation,
starts to lose consistency”.
This work is to be found
in the centre of the exhibition set up in the Palazzina
dei Giardini. The left wing of
the ancient ducal hothouse, on the other hand, hosts his
debut works, the corpus of previously unseen works entitled
Radici (Roots) dating to between 1955 and 1965.
Several
dozen snapshots that document the city, its inhabitants,
its rituals; a series of flashes (each photograph is illuminated
only when a spectator passes by) which Vaccari uses as
screens against which to set the experiences of others,
having realised soon on in his career just how photography
is not a faithful reflection of reality, but how it possesses
a capacity for recording and perceiving which is far greater
than that of the eye, as if doted with a kind of "technological
subconscience" to use a definition given by the artist
himself.
A few years after the last shots of Radici (Roots),
Franco Vaccari started to refuse the point of view typical
of
those who create photographic images: between 1967 and
1968 he shot the series La città vista a livello
di cane (The town vieded from a dog's eye level) with which
his career developed. "Among the countless automatisms
that come into play when you take a photo – the artist
explains – there is also that of taking all the shots
from human height. In order to shake off this habit, I
wanted to identify with dogs in order to try and see things
from their point of view, and so I lowered the camera from
the usual 170cm to 50cm".
Animals feature once more
in the short film I cani lenti (Slow dogs) in which a number
of stray dogs are filmed
in slo-mo, an approach that shows the interaction between
the movie camera and the animals that sense they are being
observed. From the travels of the memory to Trip lucido
(Lucid trip), exhibition in real-time No. 12, one of Vaccari’s
historical works produced in the tower of Graz in 1975
is "reinstalled" here especially for the occasion.
Fotomuseo
Giuseppe Panini, 160 Via Giardini, Modena
And it
is from here that the visitors will set out on a real journey
to the other display venue, the Fotomuseo
Giuseppe Panini, where there will be three videos waiting
for them: Nei sotterranei (In the cellars), Ventoscopio
(Windoscope) and Piloro (Pilorus). More unseen material
makes up another corpus of photography entitled Isola di
Wight (Isle of Wight),1970. A very particular and innovative
reportage due to the fact that once more, Franco Vaccari
wanted the automatic capacity of the photographic medium
to prevail in recording the behavioural dynamics rather
than the artist’s conditioning. "When after
a night spent sleeping rough I set out to document the
awakening of the camped-out sleeping festival-goers – writes
Vaccari – I realised that I belonged to a culture
that had nothing to do with that of the event I was taking
part in. And so in order to free myself of my mental conditionings,
I decided to get around them through the use of an automatism:
I decided to take one photo to the left and one to the
right every 100 metres.”
Still largely unpublished, the works that tell the story
of a number of Franco Vaccari’s minimal journeys,
such as Viaggio+Rito (Journey+Rite), exhibition in real-time
No. 2, which – with the help of two Polaroid-touting
photographers – documents every moment of Franco
Vaccari’s journey from Modena train station up to
his arrival at the Galleria 2000 in Bologna, where the
artist starts to put up the photos of his journey as well
as that of the arrival of the visitors as they start to
come in. "Those who came to have a look were immediately
incorporated, multiplied, recorded, captured in unrepeatable
instants, and this destroyed the contemplation space only
to open up that of action". Another minimal journey
is Omaggio all'Ariosto (Homage to Ariosto), in which Vaccari
sets off for Ferrara to the exhibition of the same name
dedicated to the poet, following the same path walked along
by the poet from Carpi to Ferrara, taking Polaroid snapshots,
gluing them onto the postcards of the towns he passes through
and posting them to Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara.
The
exhibition is accompanied by the book "FRANCO
VACCARI. Fotografie 1955/1975" published by Baldini
Castoldi Dalai (Milan, 2007). The book is a volume of 176
pages featuring some 245 photographic images, texts in
both Italian and English, with contributions by Angela
Madesani, by the exhibition curators as well as by Angela
Vettese. |
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Exhibition Franco
Vaccari. Opere 1955/1975
Venues Palazzina dei Giardini,
corso Canalgrande, Modena
Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini, via Giardini 160, Modena
When 2nd
December 2007 - 17th February 2008
Opening 2nd December
2007
At 11,30am Palazzina dei Giardini
At 12,30am Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini
Curators Luca Panaro
and Roberta Russo
Organisation and Production
Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini di Modena
Galleria Civica di Modena
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena
Press Preview
Friday 30th November 2007 at 11.30am, the press conference
starts in the Palazzina dei Giardini venue and continues
at the Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini.
A free shuttle bus service
between the two venues will be available.
Opening times
Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini
monday 3pm-5pm
tuesday-friday 9,30am-12am; 3pm-5pm
saturday, sunday and public holidays 10am-1pm; 3pm-7pm
25th, 26th December, 1st January 3pm-6pm
Opening times
Palazzina dei Giardini
tuesday-friday 10,30am-1pm; 3pm-6pm
saturday, sunday and public holidays 10,30am-6pm
closed on mondays
25th, 26th December, 1st January 3pm-6pm
Entrance free
Info
Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini, via Giardini 160, Modena
tel. +39 059 224418 info@fotomuseo.it
Galleria Civica di Modena,
c.so Canalgrande 103, Modena
tel. + 39 059 2032911/2032940 - fax + 39 059 2032932
Press office
Contesto - Contenuti per la Comunicazione
tel. +39 059 346318 stampa@contestoweb.com
Galleria Civica di Modena
tel. +39 059 2032883 galcivmo@comune.modena.it
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