ALESSANDRA CALO’
SECRET GARDEN

November 30th - January 30th 2015

Scheda tecnica

Opening Reception: Saturday November 29th, 2014 from 6 pm

Female figures coming from an ancient world, find their story in the mystery of a negative.
Looking beyond transparency to discover hidden landscapes

They are Secret Gardens those that Alessandra Calò will present on 29 November. The project came into being in Reggio Emilia and was shown for the first time in 2014 during the European International Festival of Photography. It was selected by the curators Elio Grazioli and Gigliola Foschi and won the first prize for the Off Section of the  Festival.

It is an installation of thirteen works that brings back forgotten emotions and thoughts
through the use of old negative plates found and collected in antique markets. Each of the works is composed of a black cube, on whose face  a glass negative is inserted: a window that both  hides and reveals  a garden, the secret heart concealed by the container. Shrubs and flowers add to and mingle with the figures on the surface, as if to materialize emotions and memories of a lifetime that  have to be placed on focus. The images depict women of the early years of the last century, but  are not real photographs but their negatives: the lightness/darkness of traditional photography is reversed creating an overturning of vision. The reversal of chiaroscuro heralds and accompanies this overturning from the point of view of the observer: what is clear, visible to all, loses its importance at the expense of what is hidden and usually invisible.
Each cube rests on an iron frame with a drawer underneath: here an another "secret" is yet enshrined;  a short literary work that the artist has entrusted to a women writer, who has tried to imagine the story of the woman depicted on the glass negative.
Unlike an image in the mirror - symmetrical simulacrum of our figure and therefore  detached and alienating - the transparent image involves the viewer and makes him look at it closer and go beyond it, to look for the landscape that it hides. It is an all-female work: the faces depicted, the texts of the writers that give them voice, the sensitivity and aesthetics that accompanies it.
What the artist asks of those who approach the work is "to take a journey and find something that has been lost: to discover that within us there is a garden flourishing, and it would only take a moment to discover the flowers, the scent, the colors... and return from the journey with the knowledge that we still exist.”
In each stage of the project - which will start again from Genoa then move to Amsterdam and Aix En Provence - different cubes are presented. For some  the artist has chosen to strengthen the ties with the territory through the help of “local” writers. For this edition in Genoa, the project has been enriched by the works of Rossella Bianchi, Oriana Mariotti and Flavia Fedele. During the vernissage, the performance "She ocean - concerto for small instruments and new found sounds" with the City Nazim, a project of the artists Dalila Longo and Nazim Comunale, will take place.

Biography

Born in Taranto (Italy) in 1977
She independently develops a passion for art, focusing first on photography and later on experimentation with materials and creating installations. The predominant theme is the memory, understood as a way  of reconciliation with a concrete present, instead of the exhausting re-enactment of the moment lost forever. In addition to photography, she makes frequent use of the 'art of appropriation”, in a language determined to bring about,emotions without describing too much .
Her works has been  appreciated and often hosted in photography festivals, Italian and foreign galleries. Among her most important projects: "The objects speak tous" for the architect Italo Rota Temporary Museum, currently on view at the Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia; "Women in Fluxus" exposed and acquired by the Fondazione Palazzo Magnani; "Antipodi Apolidi”  for the Museum of Contemporary Art Space Gerra; "Lives without end" for the Technopole of Reggio
Emilia which  subsequently receives the reccomendation in the International Competition of Contemporary Art Prize Celeste Price  - photography and digital graphics section; "NDT - No Destructive Testing" exposed for La Nuit de la Photographie Contemporaine in Paris, the German gallery Berlin Avantgarde, selected for the festival YES FEST Savignano on the Rubicone and the French gallery Fontaine Obscure in Aix en Provence.
She is a constant presence at the the European Photography Festival, in 2013 ishe was among the finalists for the award OFF and in 2014 is a winner, with the installation "Secret Garden" at Palazzo Brami. She has been a curator for "The Dance of Resistance - Adolf Reichwein, a biography in movement" in collaboration with the State Ballet School of Berlin and the German artist Roman Kroke; "Saga Horse Opera" theater and opera libretto by the Italian artist Giovanni Lindo Ferretti; She participated in the editorial  project "In t'la Nudda" a social survey on the Reggiane Apennines  (Edition Abao Aqu).
Some of her installations have been published in magazines of interior design: Marie Claire Maison, ElleDecoration UK Nest, Schoner Vohnen, Abitare

Web site: www.visionquest.it
Duration: 29 November - 30 January  2015
Location: VisionQuesT contemporary photography - Piazza Invrea 4r - 16123 Genova - Italy
Info: +39 0102468771 - 335619539
Email: info@visionquest.it

  • Project: Alessandra Calò
  • Curator: Valentina Ferretti
  • Editing: Maria Teresa Grillo
  • Secret Garden: Carlo Losi
  • Writers: Abir Soleiman, Antonia Monticelli, Beatrice Baruffini, Daniela Brogi, Emmanuela Carbé, Flavia Fedele, Francesca Amati, Irene Russo, Mari Accardi, MariaGrazia Guidetti, Oriana Mariotti, Rossella Bianchi, Silvia La Ferrara
  • Performance: "She ocean - concerto for small instruments and new found sounds" with the City Nazim, a project of the artists Dalila Longo and Nazim Comunale