VASCO ASCOLINI, ALESSANDRA VINOTTO
TRACES OF THE STAGE

7th May - 6th June 2010

 

Techincal Info

Curator: Clelia Belgrado
Opening: May  6th 2010 from 6 pm to 9 pm
Duration:May 7th to June 6th 2010
Location: VISIONQUEST gallery - Piazza Invrea 4 r, 16123 Genova, Italy
Tel.:  +39 339 7534993 +39 010 2468771
Opening times: Wednesday to Saturday  3.30 pm to 7.30 pm or by appointment 
Website:  www.visionquest.it
Email information: info@visionquest.it

Vasco and Alessandra will attend the opening 

Press Release

For Vasco Ascolini fragments of figures hit by light and  impenetrable darkness. The purest whites and the deepest blacks from which details emerge, capable of signifying everything and offer a reading dictated by the emotions aroused by the spectacle represented
For Alessandra Vinotto the black and the white; of all the  colours they  are, "the only ones able to restore the truth of the characters moving on stage: the details of the glance, the notes of the spirit, the modulations of thought, the subtle animal  intricacies."
Both photographers, in this exhibition conceived by Clelia Belgrado for VisionQuest, show us traces of theatrical life caught on the stage and made visible through their cameras.
"The responsibility to create balance, to stir emotions and raise questions that are also rational", these are the feeling  that move Vasco Ascolini when in  the darkroom he  prepares to create images that will place  the viewer in a position to "see".
Details torn from the darkness characterise him, and have the power to show more than what an compete shape or form would, "details of bodies or statues ... of architectures, each a presence that does not exist except in my inner world when I am still in the dark room;  I manipulate fragments of negatives to create other fragments on the silver gelatine print. When, after days or weeks and months from having completed the print, I again look at it,  I realise I have almost forgotten the journey to get to the final result. What amazes me and leaves me to  wonder, is how large is the black that conceals silence,  the infinite,  hope and fear. The colour  black  bearer of anxiety but also of the sublime
The reality which takes shape through his lens and in the darkroom becomes such, for the person seeing his  photographs, only after having seeing it with his or her own eyes and often contains the "truth” giving  back marble the texture of flesh. “Sixty percent of my images are  built in the  darkroom where, often but not always, the metamorphosis of the marble, stone and other minerals into "flesh" as the flesh of dancers and mimes become mineral, takes place. These metamorphosis start right from  the choice of the film, exposure, shutter speed, chemicals, in the way I go around and deceive the “gestures” of the camera and  where technique, in this case  at the service of creativity, becomes essential "
For Alessandra Vinotto, in  this exhibition with photographs  of the theatre where constant is the strong dreamlike dimension, photography is "capturing those sudden appearances which I entrust to the eternal memory in the space of a frame.”
Faced with an performer, backstage or on stage,  with her camera, Alessandra Vinotto seeks that communication transpiring from  gestures and intentions hidden beyond the visible.  
Vasco Ascolini whom she met only two years ago, with his theatrical photographs discovered when she was young, has actually marked her professional path leading to the choices that would have taken her to "perpetuate the passage that takes the actor to be a spectator of himself crystallising the moment corresponding to his change of status "
Theatre lived as “the ephemeral and intangible place where what I do instinctually when  photographing  is shooting the next gesture, already announced but not yet occurred, that moment  still  lost in the inner maze of the actor. "
She says of herself: I try to grasp the infinite shades of feeling, the plurality of gestures and meanings that each representation carries hidden from view of the distracted ones. " But photographing  the theatre is not enough for her:  “the theatre has to be sniffed, devoured, metabolised, deeply lived”,  and this passion enables her to produce "shots closer to symbolism than documentation, capable of showing the moments stolen from the movements of the soul." 

Ginni Gibboni

Biographies

Vasco Ascolini

Nasce a Reggio Emilia nel 1937, dal ’73 al ’90 è stato il fotografo ufficiale del Teatro Municipale “Romolo Valli” di Reggio Emilia: durante questa esperienza ha intrapreso un confronto tra il linguaggio fotografico e quello teatrale, concentrandosi sul movimento dei corpi, sulla danza e la mimica. Dalla metà degli anni ’80 si dedica all’architettura e alla statuaria storica: sintesi, equilibrio positivo, tagli inattesi e, soprattutto, neri profondi e assoluti, sono le cifre distintive di A. che ha operato, su incarico del Ministero della Cultura francese (Versailles, Tuileries, Parc Royal, St. Cloud, Museo del Louvre, Museo Rodin). Fra le pubblicazioni: Il segreto della città, a cura di A. Palazzi, (2003, con testi inediti di J.Le Goff e P.Sorlin, Mantova). Fra le mostre: Istituti Italiano di Cultura, a cura di A. Gioè (personale, 2004, Il Cairo); D’apres l’Antique (Louvre, Parigi, 2000), La Vertigine dell'Ombra 2007, Palazzo Magnai Reggio Emilia, Ed. SKIRA 2007

Alessandra Vinotto

Esordisce giovanissima nei primi anni novanta come fotografa di teatro, affermandosi in seguito come ritrattista e reporter di viaggi.  Le sue foto sono state pubblicate da numerosi quotidiani e riviste italiani ed esteri, fra i quali Vogue, Marie Claire, Herald Tribune, opera Actual, Shots, Carnet, Amica, Gulliver, Ville e Giardini, Musica, Amadeus.  Le sue immagini sono state utilizzate per illustrare libri e cataloghi di scrittori, poeti e artisti.  Ha all’attivo sedici mostre personali e trentadue mostre collettive nazionali ed internazionali. 
Sin dall’inizio della sua attività di fotografa porta avanti un lavoro di ricerca personale sul linguaggio corporeo, tramite il ritratto, l’autoritratto e le foto ricreate in studio con modelli e modelle.
Negli ultimi anni si è avvicinata al mondo del videoclip e della video arte, esordendo come art director nel 2007 a fianco del regista Francesco Rotunno.