SILVIO WOLF
DOUBLE TRUTH

“ Double Truth”

Opening reception:                   
Thursday June 8th from 6:30 pm

Duration:                                    
June 9th – September 9th, 2017

Location:
VisionQuesT 4rosso - Piazza Invrea 4r,  16123 Genova, Italy
Unimediamodern – Piazza Invrea 5/b, 16123 Genova, Italy

Gallery Hrs:
from Tuesday to Saturday, 3 pm to 7 pm and by appointment   

Web site:
www.visionquest.it – www.unimediamodern,com                

e-mail- informations:                 
info@visionquest.it - info@unimediamodern.com

 

The artist will be present

 

At a time when the concept of post-truth suggests the overcoming of the notion of truth up to causing its

loss of importance, relating it with emotions and personal beliefs to the detriment of verifiable facts, Silvio Wolf's double exhibition, like an arrow pointing simultaneously in two directions, questions the idea of Truth through a double position: the reality of the photographic medium and the one that is reflected onto it.

 

At Vision Quest gallery the artist presents the Horizons series, abstract images of language, time and light self-generated within the medium, in the absence of any external referent.

At Unimedia Modern gallery the installation Shivah reflects on the critical position of the beholder in the attribution of meaning to what the image reveals.

 

In both exhibitions the linguistic and experiential dimensions are intimately connected; aiming his reflection inward and outward at the same time, Wolf produces literal and symbolic images that examine the interval between concept and experience, exploring the underlaying relation between the nature of things and their apparent image.

In all works, the relationship between work and glance is fundamental, so that vision and meaning become variables of a single path that places the Subject actively at the centre of the work.

Aware that the bulimic condition resulting from the excessive consumption of images is producing a radical impoverishment of our visual experience, Wolf’s work suggests that instead we slow down and listen, shifting the attention from the referent towards the Subject: He-She who sees, offering a new horizon of interpretation for thinking on Photography.

 

 

VisionQuest: Horizons

The Horizons series explores the linguistic potential of the photographic film leaders self-exposed to light while loading the camera. Appropriating these discarded materials of the photochemical process, the artist produces seemingly abstract images, where light acts directly onto the photosensitive material without the photographer's intention and before any pictures are taken. These scriptures of light result from an “off camera” process that happens “in camera”: a paradox producing pre-photographic images, not optical ones. Each Horizon reveals a threshold: the limit between light and darkness, matter and language, through which Wolf questions the idea of photography before the picture.

The Horizons can be seen as the ultimate state of a photo-graphic image, where language manifests itself without the subject's intervention as if man and language acted in a relationship that no longer requires any external referents. Here abstract vision and phenomenalistic objectivity coincide in the form of pure interpretations of light photographically revealed: they are attributions of meaning and not photographs.

 

Unimedia Modern: Shivah

This series questions the ambiguous and secretive nature of images, seeking a direct and more participatory relationship with the observer. Black velvet cloth protects the semi-reflective surfaces of the work from the action of light, hiding them from sight. Like precious daguerreotypes, they are exposed to light only when the subject uncovers them to look, and thus unwittingly appears reflected from multiple viewpoints. When covered, they are concealed and protected only to be imagined, thought about and remembered; once dis-covered they transform the space into a magical gallery of mirrors that places the observer at its centre, as the interpreter and protagonist of the work.

The idea of this series is related metaphorically to the Tibetan tradition of uncovering images only during the time of prayer and the Jewish tradition to cover pictures and mirrors during the mourning period that follows a relative’s death.

 

Wolf’s works are symbolic spaces of query, reflection, and identity: activators of processes and thresholds of perception. They connect different times and places, bringing them together in the perfect present of the Subject’s experience, creating a personal relationship between glance and image: the being there grants them meaning and splendour.

Technical Information

Horizons,  2006-2015

  • C-Prints on Dibond and plexiglass, from cm 100x63 to cm 160x105 - Edition of 7 + 2 a.p.

Horizons,  2016

  • Archival pigment inks Epson Ultra-Chrome HDX on Hahnemuhle paper in custom made frame. cm 55x33, framed cm 71x48x7,5 - Edition of  7 + 2 a.p.

    

Shivah - Simple Codes, 2014:

  • Series of 10 works: Ink-jet print on mirror, Dibond, black velvet. cm 50x34, custom made frame  cm 54x38x8

           Edition of 5 + 1 a.p.

 

Biography

 

Silvio Wolf (1952) lives and works between Milan and New York.

He studied Philosophy and Psychology in Italy and Photography and Visual Arts in London, where he received the Higher Diploma in Advanced Photography from the London College of Printing.  Until the mid-1980s Wolf employed photography to explore the laws, language, and two-dimensional nature of the image. His work moved in different directions from the traditionalones, which favoured the documentary and narrative value of the photographic image.  With a particular interest in the abstract, he produced polyptychs and large-format works that prompted viewers to consider the subjective and metaphorical implications of photographic technology, highlighting the medium’s limits of representation through an investigation into the visible and the invisible. Since the late-1980s he has also used moving images, still projections, light and sound to engage the history and architecture of specific venues. He responds to the personality that each place is capable of expressing and establishes a symbolic and experiential relationship with it. In his site-specific projects, as in all his photo-based work, the issues of absence, elsewhere, and threshold are always central.  He has exhibited internationally, including New Image in 1980 in Milan, Aktuell ‘83 in Munich and Documenta VIII in 1987 in Kassel.

He has created temporary and permanent installations in galleries, museums and public spaces in Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. In 2009 he was invited to participate in the 53rd Venice Biennale.

He currently teaches at the European Institute of Design in Milan and is a visiting professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

 

www.silviowolf.com