Limen: in Ragusa, Mario Cresci exhibits his project dedicated to Sicily

Mario Cresci, one of the most significant authors in the Italian panorama of contemporary photography, realized during his week of work in Ragusa in June an artistic project resulting from his interaction with the Hyblean territory and with the prints and cartographies of Sicily, collected in the precious Zipelli Collection of the Cesare and Doris Zipelli Foundation of the Banca Agricola Popolare di Ragusa.

A unique testament to the geopolitical importance of the island over the centuries, both as an expression of the attention of foreign travelers and the works ofEuropean cartographers and illustrators of the time, the Collection of Maps of Sicily confirms the uniqueness of Sicily in terms of the historical, cultural, social and economic events that involved it in the various historical periods. Mario Cresci’s unique interpretation of the precious collection created by engineer Cesare Zipelli-an economist and intellectual of great human qualities who did so much for the city of Ragusa-is part of the exhibition schedule of the 2024 edition of the Ragusa Foto Festival (Aug. 30-Sept. 30), this year dedicated to the theme Taking a Pause.

The exhibition Limen, Threshold of Passage, on display at Palazzo Garofalo, is presented in the works with a symbolic narrative time, which finds its vital space in the interaction between images of narrated places and those of real landscapes. In the series of collages, this dilated time finds its exemplification in the continuous visual transition between ancient maps of Sicily, navigational portulans, historical figures and contemporary landscapes. The sharp caesura between images becomes simultaneously the end and origin of a story within a story.

“A gulf of potential multiplicity” as Calvino says in The American Lessons and again, quoting Giordano Bruno “...a world or gulf never saturated with forms and images.”

In the same exhibition, images of the sunny Ragusa area enter powerfully into this journey/story. They are “thought images,” creating unexpected juxtapositions between the various elements of the landscape.

Mario Cresci(Chiavari 1942) photographer, visual designer and lecturer at theISIA University of Urbino. Since the 1960s he has been the author of eclectic works characterized by a freedom of research that crosses drawing, photography, video experience, and installations. Among the first in Italy of his generation, he applies the culture of design and combines it with an experimentation on visual languages. Of 2004 the anthological exhibition Le case della fotografia at the GAM in Turin. In 2023 he proposed a reinterpretation of his work through specific focuses recounted in two large exhibitions, L’esorcismo del tempo, 1960-1980 at MAXXI in Rome and Colorland, 1975-1983 at the Monastery of Astino for the MIA Foundation in Bergamo. In 2019 he published Segni migranti. History of Graphics and Photography an important volume on his research. He lives and works in Bergamo.

For all information, you can visit the official website of Ragusa Foto Festival.

Limen: in Ragusa, Mario Cresci exhibits his project dedicated to Sicily

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