Portraits of artists: a photography exhibition in Gradisca d'Isonzo

Until September 18, 2022, the Luigi Spazzapan Regional Gallery of Contemporary Art in Gradisca d’Isonzo presents the exhibition Artist + Artist. Contemporary Visions, curated by Lorenzo Michelli and organized by ERPAC FVG - Ente Regionale per il Patrimonio Culturale del Friuli Venezia Giulia. The exhibition is part of the larger exhibition project dedicated to the theme of the self-portrait and artist’s portrait, promoted and developed by ERPAC in recent months on three exhibition venues: at the Magazzino delle Idee in Trieste(Io, lei, l’altra. Photographic portraits and self-portraits of women artists), at Palazzo Attems Petzenstein in Gorizia(Riflessi. Self-portraits in the mirror of history) and at the Spazzapan Gallery in Gradisca d’Isonzo.

A joint initiative, which the Spazzapan Gallery has actively joined, as it is in line with some of its main objectives aimed at mapping and cataloguing the contemporary artistic production of Friuli Venezia Giulia, as well as its valorization and promotion. It is precisely in moments of crisis, such as the current one, that reflections and questions about the role of art become more urgent: what are its potentialities, its strength, its limits, its territory of action, and what must be the role of the visual artist in the historical phases in which all certainty seems to be failing. ERPAC’s exhibition project aims to answer these questions, trying to give voice to artists, their ambitions, illusions and tragic defeats, looking at the Artist through the eyes of Artists. In this context, the exhibition Artist + Artist aims to offer its own interpretation and vision of the theme of the portrait, an artistic genre that has always been popular, leading to two other themes: that of the identification of the man and the artist - of the motivations that drive him to work, to convey thoughts, ideas and suggestions - and that of the relationship with the observer, the public.

The exhibition is divided into two distinct sections: a first part is dedicated to historical-documentary photography, in which a selection of three photographic collections shed light on the portraiture of contemporary avant-garde artists with different optics and purposes, from the auteur portrait to reportage. These are shots from the photographic archives of Maurizio Frullani, Branko Lenart and Mario Sillani Djerrahian. A second section of the exhibition is dedicated to contemporary artworks specially created by the artists invited to participate in the project. The artist in this section of the exhibition becomes more like a riddler who works by fragments, signs and objects, which take shape through painting, photography, and installations. Hence the idea that the exhibition route is a kind of map full of clues through which to grasp the meaning of the work and the exhibition as a whole.

There are three groups of photographs that bear witness to the photographic section devoted to portraits of artists. The first is that of Maurizio Frullani, author of the most complete photographic archive to date, dedicated to artists active in recent decades in Friuli Venezia Giulia. From the late 1970s until a few months before his death (which occurred in 2015), Frullani wanted to bear witness to the most interesting intellectuals and artists in Friuli Venezia Giulia and the Central European area, photographing them in their ateliers, but also in settings that dialogue with the different personalities he portrayed. These are thus posed portraits, meticulously studied, in which the great tradition of pictorial portraiture is recognizable.

Closer to reportage, on the other hand, is the work of Branko Lenart, an artist born in Slovenia and later operating mainly in Graz. The artist was asked to borrow a photographic series consisting of 24 portraits of the greatest representatives of photography: from Luigi Ghirri to Helmut Newton, from Ansel Adams to Nan Goldin, from André Kertész to William Eggleston. An overview of faces that belong to the history of photographic art, true sacred monsters seen through the eye of Branko Lenart, a frequent visitor to international photography events, including Les Rencontres d’Arles, the first world festival entirely dedicated to this artistic expression.

Mario Sillani Djerrahian’s work also documents the protagonists of great art, with a series of reportages executed at the Venice Biennale. There is always a conceptual look in his snapshots, sometimes expressed by bringing architectural elements in the foreground closer to the figures or by focusing more on asymmetry than on the centrality of the photographic shot. His photographs thus illuminate a kind of behind-the-scenes look at the great Venetian kermesse, attended by the protagonists of those years of powerful neo-avant-garde, of the great protests that aimed to modify statutes, modes, and purposes of art making. Behind what might appear to be a simple reportage, in search of the faces of the great actors of the contemporary art scene (from Vedova to Beuys, from Marina Abramovic to Mario Merz), one thus glimpses the critical gaze of a conceptual artist who, precisely from those years, has set his research on the limits and modalities of the photographic medium.

The exhibition was preceded by a symposium with artists linked to Friuli Venezia Giulia, who were invited to contribute to the final result of the project: Matteo Attruia, Michele Bazzana, Thomas Braida, Annibel Cunoldi Attems, Luciano de Gironcoli, Franco Dugo, Roberto Kusterle, Alessandra Lazzaris, Maria Elisabetta Novello, Paola Pisani, Anna Pontel, Mario Sillani Djerrahian, Michele Tajariol, Giorgio Valvassori, and Aleksander Veliscek.

The exhibition is thus the result of a series of meetings between the artists and the curators, aimed at developing the themes underlying the concept of self-portraiture and the artist’s portrait, from an overall perspective in which the artist is involved in the overall project, in an extended relationship with the other participants and promoters. In this section, the theme of self-portraiture in contemporary art was developed by each artist beyond representational concerns. Figuration, the recognition of figures, is only one of the ways in which the artistic message can be conveyed to us.

The exhibition itinerary in this section develops themes related to identity and disappearance, non-sense and the impossibility of representation and knowing, as well as those related to the specificity of the photographic medium, the art system or reconnaissance on research in the visual arts in general. There are portraits tending toward fading, occlusion of the gaze, or fragments of private life in search of a new extra-everyday and artistic relationship; there are those who go beyond the face to symbiotically unite with the landscape, the true representation of the self; there are those who wish to fix extravagant masquerades to emphasize exotic, other, distant components.

A reflection not only on what the artist offers us, but also on who is behind the work, thus who the artist is, in an immediate game of cross-references, identifications, acknowledgements, in a new hall of mirrors.

For all information, you can visit www.musei.regione.fvg.it.

Portraits of artists: a photography exhibition in Gradisca d'Isonzo

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