23 May – 28 June 2015

curated by Karin Reisova’ and Sergio Manca

opening on Saturday 23rd May – the artist will be present

Areacreativa42 presents at Casa Toesca, from the 23rd of May to the 28th of June 2015, a selection of works by the photographer Mauro Davoli, a finalist of the 2013 edition of the Art Prize CBM – Premio Carlo Bonatto Minella. The exhibition, curated by Karin Reisovà and Sergio Manca, is a part of the project  ”Young Curators” and offers a journey through images chosen from four different series of the artist: the Shells, La Défense, Burano and Transfers. The exhibition aim is to give a broad vision of a particularly eclectic decades-long career built with a strong intellectual approach, but without redundant intellectualism and dominated by love and a sincere exaltation of pure beauty.

The fascinating series of shells is part of a larger project on still life, inspired by the Flemish and Dutch art of the seventeenth century and in particular  by the painter Adrien Cohort. The composition of the shells and their illumination, that let them emerge from the darkness of the background, are immediately imprinted in the eye of the observer, with the addition of an elegant game of references, divided between educated quotes and conceptual paradoxes.

The visual culture of Davoli is the starting point for the series, developed over many years but exceptionally homogeneous, dedicated to the painted walls of the island of Burano. Once again,the eye of the photographer is ready to identify tiny details and extremely elegant in the choice of color combinations. Like abstract paintings, these images always reveal the multi-dimensional nature of the objects, thanks to the discrete presence of a shadow, the rising of a crack or the  intermittent vibration of plastered surfaces.

The long experience in architectural photography is the basis of another cardinal point of Davoli’s art, as evidenced by the series of photographs that represent, in an almost Renaissance Paris, la Défense. Its perspective symmetries  dominate the  view of what we might call a modern ideal city, which, even today, seems shrouded in the cold atmosphere of a sci-fi set.

The last part of the exhibition will be devoted to a new series, called Transfers, obtained through a special process of development, transfer and print from a Polaroid film. Through this technique the artist represents skulls of animals depriving them of any harshness, but dominated by an elegant aesthetics. These works show another fundamental characteristic of the artist’s career: a tireless journey of experimentalism, started in his youth and never abandoned.

Exhibition organized with the support of the Lions Club Alto Canavese.