project info
The reality is never as you see, the truth is above all imagination. (René Magritte) Dadaism was a destructive movement of academic aesthetics, followed by a constructive moment of a new conception of art. (Man Ray) If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream. (René Magritte) It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them. (Man Ray) The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown. (René Magritte)
Magritte Man Ray Dadaism Surrealism Metaphysics Cubism
When the director of Lu.C.C.A. museum asked me to think and shoot a performance to anticipate the near opening of the place, I literally grab on to everything I knew, felt and lived inside of me. It was an absolute novelty for me, because, contrary to my usual way of working, that is following my instinct and my curiosity and then find me in the shootings, I would have had to know me before. As a unique element to start with I had the apple as logo of the museum, something upon which is hard to do something new and so I destroyed everything about the apple that I first thought of. I had to do it to arrive to a more deeper level of myself. Man Ray used to say: “Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how’, while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why’”. I could never have imagined that my performance would have been simultaneous to the exhibition of my favorite photographer, my master of the darkroom. During my exchange of mails with the director of the museum I used to write him that we had to make ourselves the main question: what is the purpose of this? What do I want to say? What is the message that arrives? It was really important to find the right questions to make the Lucca citizens ask themselves “what will happen?” That is why I added to the apple concept that of “contemporary art”. Not because that would have made things easier but because that was the real objective: the new museum (apple) of contemporary art, that is Magritte who, by the way, is for me an absolute landmark for my artistic, but not only, life. So I challenged myself and I brought 20 girls red dressed from via Filungo to San Michele square. I never saw them before and they haven’t seen me! In something like one hour I told them what I had been thinking about in a month, but most of all I tried to pass to them all my emotions. What do 20 girls expected from a person that wanted to tell a story through them? I thought most of all being reassured, and that is exactly what I did. I said “just be yourself and enjoy it, I’ll take care of everything else”. Magic words that softened a tension that was tightening myself too.
awards
PX3 Prix de la Photographie 2010 Honorable Mention Category Adevertising/Other
IPA 2010 Honorable Mention Category Advertising
press review
La Nazione Lucca 2009
eARS.it 2009
A picture from the project has been used in n. 1/2009 of La Freccia magazine, monthly issue edited by Ferrovie dello Stato, to open the article about the Lucca Digital PhotoFest.
press release
Lucca digital photo festival
mpNEWS.itpNEWS.it