From September 13 to October 26, at the Palazzo Re Rebaudengo in Guarene d'Alba, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents a personal exhibition dedicated to Vincenzo Castella, curated by Filippo Maggia.
Vincenzo Castella is one of the most lucid, critical personalities of today, on an international level. His work, which examines the architectural semblances of cities, has undoubtedly influenced the development of the language of photography today.
The exhibition presents 25 works in different formats. The selection illustrates Castella's investigation, started in 1998 and still ongoing, into a series of cities of the Western world (Milan, Turin, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Athens, Cologne, Graz and others).
“What the artist seems particularly interested in is not so much the architecture of the city in itself, as the direct representation of the place, and therefore the understanding of the anthropological and cultural events that determine its belonging to a particular genre or category - an approach that was highly popular in photography during the 90s.
Not even the use of a specific technological and mechanical tool like the photo camera, seems to be of any concern to the author, to such an extent that he does not feel the need to affirm the existence of a point of view, un certain regard: rather, it is the architectural resemblance, the interaction between visual elements and media, and especially the process of 'absorption' of images in a wider sense, i.e. styles, habits and customs, which unite cities and, at the same time, individualize them, so that they come to represent and manifest the ultimate, 'infinite' (inasmuch as it is mutant) meaning of Castella's research. Indeed it is not by chance that the most recent book written about his work is titled Book of Buildings, indicating how the city as a whole is actually a set of bodies - the buildings, inhabited by other bodies, which may communicate less between each other than the cities themselves can do now, in a subtle, almost subliminal way”. Filippo Maggia.
Vincenzo Castella was born in Naples in 1952. He currently lives in Milan. He began to photograph in 1975 and in the few years that followed he repeatedly traveled to the US, where he completed the project “Hammie Nixon’s people”, consisting of photographs and 16mm films dealing with Afro-american people, their lifestyles and the architecture of cities in the South. Since 1980 he has exhibited in Europe and in the US. Among the solo shows held in recent years, it is worth mentioning: Cologne 1997 at the Monika Spruth Galerie; Amsterdam 2000 at the Paul Andriesse Galerie; New York 2001, Laurence Miller Gallery; Milan 2003, Le Case d’Arte and Arles, Refectoire de l’Abbaye de Montmajour. His photographs have been acquired by numerous archives and public as well as private collections.
