Stranger than Fiction
Posted on May 23 2019
.Stranger than Fiction │ 2nd May - 6th June 2019
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Already at the end of the 19th century, in the critical essay “The Art of Fiction”, Henry James affirmed that “fiction is one of the fine arts, deserving in its turn of all the honours and emoluments that have hitherto been reserved for the successful profession of music, poetry, painting, architecture”.
Several decades later, we are still arguing about the mutual relationship between “art” and “fiction”, even if we are dealing with something more unusual, both thematically and aesthetically. That clarifies the title chosen for this collective show ongoing for the whole month of May at Spazio Millepiani (Rome), which is ”Stranger than fiction”. On this occasion, digital and photographic pieces insist on the aforementioned terms and topics, in order to create new connections, a dialogue platform able to absorb the observers in original creative dimensions.
Several decades later, we are still arguing about the mutual relationship between “art” and “fiction”, even if we are dealing with something more unusual, both thematically and aesthetically. That clarifies the title chosen for this collective show ongoing for the whole month of May at Spazio Millepiani (Rome), which is ”Stranger than fiction”. On this occasion, digital and photographic pieces insist on the aforementioned terms and topics, in order to create new connections, a dialogue platform able to absorb the observers in original creative dimensions.
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Imagination is clearly the main theme here, letting our minds flow towards surreal and sometimes utopian imaginaries, and abandoning a plausible representation of reality as it appears. When staring at the pictures exhibited, one needs to let all the familiar points of references go, accepting the change and indulging the visionary worlds re-enacted by the artists. Like in the movies, we are asked to empathise with a new context, being carried away by fantasy and trying to identify ourselves in an unprecedented situation or character.
Imagination is clearly the main theme here, letting our minds flow towards surreal and sometimes utopian imaginaries, and abandoning a plausible representation of reality as it appears. When staring at the pictures exhibited, one needs to let all the familiar points of references go, accepting the change and indulging the visionary worlds re-enacted by the artists. Like in the movies, we are asked to empathise with a new context, being carried away by fantasy and trying to identify ourselves in an unprecedented situation or character.
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Gianluca Calise, Life on Mars, 2018
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Rachel Orue, Sonya, 2017
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Giving a closer look to the images, you can see a predominant persistence of two artistic genres: still life on the one hand and portrait on the other. But despite the artists admit tradition as part of their work, they twist and shake the norms until they reach a reversed world where there are no rules.
In upside-down universes, flowers are no longer hydrated with water and there are plenty of unrealistically silent and deserted rooms where no one can go in. Abandoned buildings are just waiting for an apocalypse while cities and landscapes are populated by monstrous constructions and fictitious characters.
Even when referring to people, numerous are the paradoxes staged within the photos: some faces are hidden, some others censored, covered, so as to bring our attention elsewhere. And once something is missing, we need to compensate this lack with our inventiveness.
Quoting the artist Barbara Kruger, certain “bodies become battlegrounds”, bearer of messages, obscure meanings we can maybe identify. Or maybe not.
In upside-down universes, flowers are no longer hydrated with water and there are plenty of unrealistically silent and deserted rooms where no one can go in. Abandoned buildings are just waiting for an apocalypse while cities and landscapes are populated by monstrous constructions and fictitious characters.
Even when referring to people, numerous are the paradoxes staged within the photos: some faces are hidden, some others censored, covered, so as to bring our attention elsewhere. And once something is missing, we need to compensate this lack with our inventiveness.
Quoting the artist Barbara Kruger, certain “bodies become battlegrounds”, bearer of messages, obscure meanings we can maybe identify. Or maybe not.
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Allison Morris, Whole, 2018
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Ray Ewing, Yuma Fauxasis #2, 2015
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Ray Ewing, Mescalero Fauxasis, 2015
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Melonie Mulkey, Restoration, 2018
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Stranger than Fiction Exhibition Catalogue │ Buy it
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