Japan is on display in Milan with Hana to Yama, a solo exhibition by Linda Fregni Nagler

Banca Generali presents, at its Private office in Piazza Sant’Alessandro 4 in Milan, the art exhibition Hana to Yama by Linda Fregni Nagler (Stockholm, 1946), an interesting and appreciated Italian artist. The solo show features more than 30 photographs related to her many years of research on the Yokohama School that developed in Japan in the second half of the 19th century in conjunction with the opening of borders and the modernization of the country, which attracted many artists and intellectuals at the time in what was called a kind of new “grand tour of the East.”

The idea of exhibiting this series dedicated to Japanese photography for the first time in Milan, where Nagler lives and works, stems from a proposal by Banca Generali and curator Vincenzo De Bellis, Associate Director and Curator of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the United States and Co-Director of the Fondazione Furla in Italy, to bring new light to Italian talent. After seven years with various exhibition experiments, the private bank has in fact chosen to establish a new three-year project: BG Art Talent aims to enhance Italian creativity in its various artistic expressions, with a focus on the most innovative proposals among contemporary artists through a program of acquisitions and exhibitions.

Hana to Yama offers a new glimpse into a photographic style that combined the Western technique of albumen printing with the traditional craftsmanship of local painters, with innovative and remarkable artistic results. A great collector of historical photographs and fascinated by the peculiarities of this school, Linda Fregni Nagler has been pursuing for several years a path of collecting subjects belonging to this photographic genre with the aim of reviving a dying world and recalling the artistic character of these images, for which there is also a great difficulty of attribution.

CEO Gian Maria Mossa says, “We are really happy to host in our spaces this solo exhibition of Linda’s work, which represents something unique and very original even for the attentive audience of art lovers in Milan. Her work is striking not only for its extraordinary elegance and expressiveness, but also for the great study behind it, as can be seen from the attention to detail resulting from the immense work of collecting and cataloging, re-photographing and painting in the reconstruction of the works. Sincere thanks to Linda for the refinement of this exhibition and to Vincenzo for his passion and willingness to accompany us on this journey together in favor of Italian talent.”

On the other hand, curator Vincenzo De Bellis states, “Linda Fregni Nagler has been carrying out for years a punctual research on the nature, mechanisms and ambiguities of photographic language that make her one of the most interesting and significant representatives of Italian art of her generation. A generation that is about to reach full artistic maturity.”

Returning to the details of the exhibition, the title Hana to Yama (“Flowers and Mountain” in Japanese), reflects the two nuclei of photographs presented: flower peddlers and views of Mount Fujiyama, that is, the two typical subjects that recur in the Yokohama School. The artist re-photographed the originals in his possession, printed them in a darkroom on cotton paper and colored them by hand, after a long process of researching and fine-tuning materials and pigments that can now be likened to those of the Yokohama Shashin. In his studio, a chain of work similar to that of Japanese studios was, in fact, put in place.

The exhibition tour begins with Flower sellers depicting traveling flower sellers who attracted the attention of Western travelers with the small portable architectures with which they carried flowers, inescapable elements of nature in Japanese daily life. Linda Fregni Nagler repurposes these images in eight large-format photographs in which the subjects pose, aware that they are being watched, in the photographer’s studio in front of a neutral backdrop, assuming proud and hieratic poses.

The exhibition continues with views of Fujiyama. These are mostly anonymous photographs, taken from vantage points for views of the mountain. In the original images, these places recur and create visual short circuits: they all look alike but are always different, sometimes in details that are not recognizable at first glance, because they were taken at different times, by different photographers, with different cameras. The artist has grouped them together, re-photographed, reprinted and colored them by hand, trying to unify the luminous and chromatic atmospheres of these small photographic nuclei.

Accompanying the exhibition is a Humboldt books volume in dual languages, Italian and English. The exhibition opens from December 17, 2018 to April 7, 2019. For all information you can email receptionprivatemi@bancagenerali.it.

Pictured: Linda Fregni Nagler, Jinrikisha (2018; hand-colored silver gelatin print)

Japan is on display in Milan with Hana to Yama, a solo exhibition by Linda Fregni Nagler

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