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Structures
Spazio Lab-A, Cagliari | October 1 – 10, 2016

Curator A. Muratore

The group exhibition entitled Structures, hosted at LAB-A from 1 to 10 October, brings together the work of thirty photographers from different countries, each offering a personal perspective on the theme of structures. These structures may be visible or invisible, physical or intangible: they include mental constructs as well as the frameworks that, more or less consciously, shape our relationship with the environment, our lifestyles, social relationships, conventions, and our approach to reality.

Structures reveals what the history of art has recognised as an inherent concern of every artist working within the visual, plastic, and architectural arts: the study and investigation of the objects with which they engage. Decomposition precedes every act of symbolic composition; it is an essential process for understanding the nature of any object, beginning with its structure. Some of the artists featured in this exhibition employ photography to undertake an investigation that lays bare the structures underlying the objects of their experience, bringing to light what, “from within,” sustains an image or an idea.

Empty houses bearing the memory of the past, abandoned warehouses, and fences that provide no protection but instead create a sense of displacement and dysfunction, leaving the landscape confused and unbalanced. These images are the result of an independent process of physical and mental exploration into the structures that shape every individual’s life. Some possess a documentary degree zero, while others represent a form of detachment from reality—or even a new way of perceiving it.

Time plays a central role in this exhibition through its involvement in the processes of decomposition. It reminds us of the ephemeral nature of human existence and of the structures within which we live and leave our traces. Space, time, and the memory of human experience thus become elements in an open dialogue between the theme explored and the role assigned to photography: a medium through which the artists featured in this exhibition bear witness to their relationship with their surroundings and their lived experience.

Text by Antonio Muratore

Works by John Sanderson; Sabrina Chin; Anna Yeroshenko; Laura E. Migliorino