Photography in Italy between the 1980s and 1990s on display in Soliera, from Ghirri to Basilico

From October 7, 2023 to January 7, 2024, the Campori Castle in Soliera hosts theexhibition The Language of Images. Photography in Italy between the 1980s and 1990s, curated by Marcella Manni and promoted by the Municipality of Soliera and the Campori Foundation. The period between the late 1980s and early 1990s marked a strong acceleration from a technical point of view, first with the spread of computers and the Internet and then of the digital medium. But they were also years in which we had to deal on the one hand with the cultural legacy of Luigi Ghirri, who passed away in 1992, and on the other hand with experiences of practice and research across borders, which had already begun in the late 1980s.

The exhibition dedicated to Italian photography between the 1980s and 1990s brings together works from important collections, including the Cinisello Balsamo Museum of Photography and the Panizzi Library Photo Library, in Reggio Emilia, as well as galleries and private collections. The exhibition thus features works by Andrea Abati, Marina Ballo Charmet, Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Vanessa Beecroft, Carlo Benvenuto, Vincenzo Castella, Giovanni Chiaramonte, Mario Cresci, Paola De Pietri, Paola Di Bello, Vittore Fossati, Alberto Garutti, Piero Gemelli, Luigi Ghirri, Paolo Gioli, Guido Guidi, Marzia Migliora, Paolo Mussat Sartor, Occhiomagico, Cristina Omenetto, Luigi Ontani, Giulio Paolini, Marco Signorini, Alessandra Spranzi, Alessandra Tesi, Franco Vaccari, Silvio Wolf, Michele Zaza. The photographers were chosen independently of the anagraphic criterion, but focusing on the works; with this same approach, photographers who were working with a plurality of languages in those years were chosen.

Paolo Gioli employed the personal technique of transposing polaroid onto paper to focus the gaze on fragments of bodies, in a citation of classical sculpture. Luigi Ontani plays with visual, cultural, historical and mythological references, an eclectic and never resolved protagonist of refined and ironic self-portraits. The works by Guido Guidi, Vittore Fossati, Gabriele Basilico, and Vincenzo Castella are the result of the long Archivio dello Spazio commissioning project, a fundamental campaign of mapping and documenting the territory of the province of Milan between 1987 and 1997. Color dominates the selection of Olivo Barbieri’s Artificial Illuminations, monumentality and urban architecture between East and West, and Andrea Abati performs a personal experimentation of the urban landscape, between past, present and future with the series Luoghi del mutamento.

Silvio Wolf sets up site-specific for the rooms of Castello Campori the work Muro d’Icone (Wall of Icons), Marina Ballo Charmet explores and tests with Brittany the representation of light and landscape through sequences of minimal deviations. Alessandra Spranzi ’s domestic interiors are only seemingly inhabited by serene faces and harmonious atmospheres, Paola De Pietri searches for her own identity in self-portraits without referents.

Appropriation and citation: Mario Cresci pays homage to artists, more or less explicitly, through a process of rewriting and manipulation; Franco Vaccari ’s fundamental work is witnessed in the exhibition with Modena seen at the level of a dog, a synthesis of formal rigor, freedom and disenchantment in the use of the camera.

“This exhibition project explores ’The Language of Images’ with reference to a precise time span,” explains curator Marcella Manni, “and aims, certainly not exhaustive as much as sampling, almost ’coring,’ to collect, present and compare works and authors who in those years faced with their research, the challenges of technological advancement and at the same time refined and specified their own language, aesthetic and formal.”

Accompanying the exhibition is a publication, published by Metronom Books, which collects the iconographic set and interviews with some of the artists, collectors, curators, and protagonists of the art scene: Olivo Barbieri, Matteo Balduzzi, Vittoria Ciolini, Ettore Molinario, Mario Trevisan, and Silvio Wolf.

The exhibition is open to the public free of charge; it is promoted by the Municipality of Soliera and the Campori Foundation, with the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Carpi, and the contribution of Le Gallerie, Banca Generali Private - Marco Ferrari Private Banker, Granarolo.

Hours: Saturday and Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 7:30 p.m.

Image: Gabriele Basilico, Cassano d’Adda. Dam (1987; 40 x 50 cm, gelatin silver bromide paper) © Gabriele Basilico/Archive Gabriele Basilico Metropolitan City of Milan/Museum of Contemporary Photography, Milan-Cinisello Balsamo

Photography in Italy between the 1980s and 1990s on display in Soliera, from Ghirri to Basilico

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