The inauguration of MIA photo fair 2018 is close and our preview of the works that will be exhibited during the fair goes on. We have selected a series of projects that fit perfectly into our curatorial style and which represent the quality proposed by this new edition of the most important Italian photography fair.
Big name and young talents alternate during this event, created with the aim of highlighting the transverse role that photography has come to play between the languages of expression of the contemporary art system.
Our selection and our future reports will have the task of representing this important fair through our filter, proposing projects and Artists that fall within our selection, following the criteria that always accompany our research. In this way we will realize an authorial representation of reality rather than a simple collection of information, all to show aspects that we know are of interest to PHROOM lovers.
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Istantanea, ’90S // Mario Schifano // Boxart Galleria d’Arte
In the space reserved to many artists exhibited through the years by Boxart, it is noticeable a series of photo 10×15 cm by Mario Schifano called Istantanee. This involves a mix of images coming from the cathode-ray-tube, of which the artist born in Homs was a omnivorous consumer: he devoured them, giving them back retouched by his creative spontaneous energy.
The artworks, which are all of the first half of the Nineties, were presented in the gallery by Achille Bonito Oliva in 2002.
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Meiji Shrine, Tokyo, Japan, 1951 // Werner Bischof // Bildhalle
The Swiss Magnum Photographer Werner Bischof (1916-1954) presents the work of one of the outstanding photographers of the 20th century. Werner Bischof is known as a master of black-and-white photography. His work was created in a very brief period and took him halfway around the world.
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After the Gold Rush, 2008 // Felix Curto // Nuova Galleria Morone
In Felix Curto photography has a physical component of an object, a main element that gives physicality to thought.
With a Nikkon 801 AF, he realizes real socio-cultural reports. The works presented in the exhibition project are about the life experience of 10 years spent in Mexico. A long survey that Curto has done on the social geographies of this land, is revived in his works by the imagination of the American counterculture of the sixties.
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Franco Battiato, da “La voce del padrone”, 1981 // Roberto Masotti // 29 Arts in Progress Gallery
Roberto Masotti presents a rare selection of photographs portraying the world most influential personalities in contemporary and experimental jazz.
He has been official photographer of Teatro alla Scala together with Silvia Lelli from 1979 to 1996 and collaborates with ECM Records since 1973.
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Elle Decor, Hopper //Giovanni Gastel
Giovanni Gastel was born in Milan on December 27th, 1955 to Giuseppe Gastel and Ida Visconti di Modrone, the last of seven children. His first contact with photography takes place in the 1970s. From that moment on, a long period of apprenticeship begins, during which he shoots pictures at weddings, makes portraits, small still-lives and occasional kids’ fashion photo sessions, while an important opportunity is offered him in 1975-76, when he starts working for the auction house Christie’s.
The turning point takes place in 1981 when he meets Carla Ghiglieri who becomes his agent and introduces him to the world of fashion. Following the appearance of his first still-lives on the magazine Annabella, in 1982, he starts collaborating with Vogue Italia and then, thanks to the encounter with Flavio Lucchini, director of Edimoda, and Gisella Borioli, with the magazines Mondo Uomo and Donna.From this moment on, his professional activity becomes more intense and he starts collaborating with the most prestigious fashion magazines both in Italy and abroad, most of all in Paris. During these years of intense professional commitment he elaborates his unique style, characterized by a poetic irony, while his passion for art leads him to introduce in his pictures the taste for a well-balanced composition. His references are, for his still-lives, Pop Art, which he could see on display at Rotonda della Besana since the early 1970s, and the photographic works of Irving Penn. Taking his inspiration also from the study of Renaissance Art, Gastel constantly goes back to an ideal of elegance he has been in contact with since his early youth, mostly thanks to his mother.
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Home, 1097-1100, 2013 // Akos Czigany // Varfok Gallery
Ákos Czigány (1972, Budapest) is a leading and influential member of the contemporary Hungarian photography scene. His photographs are rooted in Hungarian Constructivist art traditions with the spatial influence of the Bauhaus Movement and the intellectual background of Conceptualism. In his series, ‘Skies: Hommage à Hiroshi Sugimoto’(2010–) and ‘Homes’ (2013–) he uses a vertical approach to capture the tension of human existence between the earth and the sky.
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Joie de Vivre, Zero, 2017 // Letizia Cariello // Galleria Massimo Minini
Letizia Cariello was born in Copparo, into a family originally from Naples that has been tied to sculpture for over two hundred years. Before turning her focus to art, she graduated in History of Art at the University of Milan and graduated in Painting at the Brera Academy, where she now teaches Artistic Anatomy. She works for the cinema in Italy and the United States. Her works are in public and private collections in Italy and abroad.
Letizia Cariello’s work is centered on translating the themes of repetition into physical places and concrete objects. Separation and isolation, as well as the realm of obsession, are explored through relationships between internal and external space, the emotions, the world of botany or of the stars, photography, video and drawing.
Selected by the European Commission to take part in the New Narrative for Europe project along with 14 other European artists, she is based in Milan, where she teaches at the Accademia di Belle Arti. She is represented by Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia.
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Hanae, 2016 // Casper Faassen // MC2 Gallery
Casper‘s unique style combines photography with painted layers. Casper’s work speaks of beauty but also of melancholy. Her women are archetypes of beauty, but they are portrayed behind a layer of fog and glass, which creates a distance between the observer and the subject.
Casper reinforces this feeling of nostalgia by adding a layer of craquelure and applying this technique refers to the traditional theme of Vanitas, widely used in seventeenth century painting. Casper often inserts symbols that represent the precariousness of earthly existence.
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The Beatles-Pillow Fight, 1964 // Harry Benson // Galerie Frederic Got
Glaswegian photographer of 88 years old, Harry Benson, has photographed a wide range of contemporary personalities. His pictures have appeared in Life, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. He took over a hundred cover shots for People. He has also photographed political figures, and covered war zones. Benson has been the subject of many exhibitions, including one organized by the Scottish National Portrait Galley at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. He has published several books.
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Unreal, 2017 // Giacomo Infantino // Caielli Fine Art
Giacomo Infantino is a photographer born in the province of Varese in 1993. He is graduating at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in New Technologies of Art. During his academic studies he began his personal research and his activity as a photographer. His work consists primarily in photographic reportage; he uses staged-scenes to tell, in a more intimate and free way, his personal vision. Giacomo in spring 2017 exhibits his works, curated by himself and Cosmo Laera, in some spaces of Brera Academy during the Salone del Mobile and Accademia Aperta; he also exhibits at the ex-studio of Piero Manzoni located in the district of Brera. In September of the same year he is selected with 10 other photography students from all over Italy to join Canon at the Visa Pour L’image in Perpignan, France.
Also with Canon, he participates in the corporate training, as speaker, at the “Canon Imaging Partner Event” meeting at the Theatre Signorelli during the last days of the Cortona On The Move Festival in Tuscany.
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Dawei, 2015 // Beatrice Minda // Podbielski Contemporary
The oldest still inhabited houses in Myanmar date back to the beginning of the twentieth century and to a social context marked by colonialism. Besides a few sparse reminders of the contemporary world, the private interiors of these houses contain numerous traces of former times. In many cases these are objects that have been left untouched for decades, which bear witness to the cosmos of a lost world. However, between the then and the now lie chasms. These spaces are imbued with an uncanny sense of emptiness. Dark whispers echo through them – a memento mori, a reminder of Burmese history hidden from view. The rooms bear witness to an earlier wealth, to adaptation and repression, and become ‘sets’ for films in which the lives of the inhabitants and their ancestors are played back in our minds.
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MIGOUELOU, State of Nature, 2016 // Claudius Schulze // VisionQuesT 4Rosso
Claudius Schulze born in Munich in 1984, is a photographer and researcher. Having travelled and worked in over fifty countries, his interest is in humanities’ deficits and the global changes of the Anthropocene. Claudius prefers subtlety and disguised symbolism in his photography. Using large format landscape photography, Claudius is currently working to investigate the picturesque nature of natural catastrophes and the threat of climate change. The project “State of Nature” was nominated for the Prix Picted and was released as book in 2017.
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MIA Photo Fair 2018
The Mall – Milano Porta Nuova
P.zza Lina Bo Bardi
9 – 12 marzo 2018
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website: MIA Photo Fair
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